Streets of Nippon
by readerofasaph
Summary: When one of Shin Tokyo's oldest runner syndicates forms an unexpected alliance with the government authorities, Atobe Keigo finds himself caught in the middle of a political game that will determine the future of the country - and of his life.
1. Chapter 1

**Shin Tokyo**

**Planet: Gibson**

**Sector: 21**

**Galaxy: Andromeda**

**2470CE.**

Atobe Keigo's boots skidded on the waterlogged bitumen as he ran up the street. It was approximately ten in the morning, Gibson +600 time. The buildings were narrow in this part of town; between three and five storeys high, walls streaked with rain and old blood.

He rounded the corner, stopped when he entered the alleyway and saw the other boy in front of him.

"Atobe. You're early." Oshitari Yuushi, dressed in rainjacket and waterproof jeans; black hair soaked right through, pulled back in a ponytail.

Keigo shrugged. "So are you." As he spoke, he took in the scene around him: brick walls, narrow passageway, and if you walked east about a hundred metres you hit a dead end, complete with a dumpster and a concrete wall so high it would take a firefighter's ladder to scale it. (Well, that or Mukahi's skills.)

The other side of the concrete wall, he noted, was where St. Rudolph territory began.

"I presumed you've investigated what happened. What are the findings so far?" he asked. He could, he realised, pick up a vague smell of rubbish from where they were standing.

"My sources tell me it happened at about midnight last night." Most people would have checked their infodevices at this point, but not Oshitari, whose mind was clean and sharp as a newly polished blade. "At least five runners were involved: Mizuki Hajime, the Fuji brothers, and a couple other St. Rudolph members, whom we haven't been able to identify.

"Mizuki came in at about eleven-thirty in a flyer." Oshitari nodded at a sandy spot over in the corner, where wheel marks could unmistakably be seen – the wheel marks of a LOFV (Low-Altitude Flying Vehicle), the transportation of choice in Shin Tokyo these days.

"We're not sure what Mizuki was up to, but he's been trying to make inroads into this territory for years, so he may just have been scouting for information. The other St. Rudolph members arrived later. Seems like there was some in-fighting going on."

"Is that so?" Keigo looked down at the ground, where he could see faint bloodstains, several of them too red to be more than a few hours old. "How many people were hurt?"

"Not more than one or two, I don't think. From what I hear, Yuuta finally figured out what's inside the pills Mizuki feeds him."

Keigo chuckled. "_Finally_?" He rather liked Fuji Yuuta: excellent fighter, good squadron leader, but the boy's level of intelligence, considering who his brother was--

Or rather, perhaps it was because of who his brother was, that made Fuji Jr. so dense.

"I wouldn't have liked to be Mizuki at that stage," Oshitari pulled a face. "Yuuta-kun has a dreadful temper. I had Taki analyse the blood samples we found; luckily our runners got them before the rain started."

He pointed a finger at the stains on the asphalt; the rain was running in rivulets along the alley, washing all but the last traces of blood away. "He must have lost a substantial amount of blood; but it's probably not fatal, since no one in St. Rudolph this morning seems particularly anxious."

Keigo privately thought having Mizuki Hajime as your leader was more than enough cause for anxiety, when other, more pressing matters occurred to him.

"What about Fuji Syuusuke? When did he become involved?"

"He seems to have arrived about five minutes after. The other SeiRu runners got Yuuta with a stunner after he attacked Mizuki, which was when the _aniki_ arrived on the scene. Fuji grabbed his brother, then took off in a flyer. Nobody felt like arguing with him."

"All by himself, then? No backup, either from his own teammates, or the Patrol?"

Oshitari gave him a look that said _it's Fuji Syuusuke, are you kidding me, _and Keigo resisted the urge to roll his eyes. What in heaven or hell kept Fuji in Seigaku? Tezuka was the absolute antithesis of what Fuji stood for: stubborn, idealistic, transparent as glass.

_There's no room for either you or me if Tezuka wins this game, Fuji Syuusuke_.

Oshitari must have been aware that Keigo's attention was wavering, but kept talking anyway, since everyone in Hyoutei knew that accusing Keigo of being less than flawless was – unproductive, at best. "One last thing. Akazawa came back later about eight o'clock, but our people were already here by this point. They tried to question him, but he left without saying anything."

"Akazawa?" The rain had slowed to a gentle drizzle; Keigo could feel his eyes narrowing, his mind dipping into a deeper train of thought. "Think he was looking for something?"

"Perhaps, but what?"

Keigo thought about the rumors he'd been hearing about St. Rudolph, over the past few days. "Have you searched the area yet?"

"We had people inspect everything within a fifty metre radius."

"Fifty metres..." He glanced east, up at the dizzyingly high concrete wall that seperated this alley from Mizuki's land.

It was a hunch; one Keigo didn't have much basis for. But Oshitari was more than logical enough for the both of them. He began walking towards the far end of the alley. "Let's look over here, Oshitari," he murmured.

The smell of waste and decay seemed to grow stronger as he approached the dead end, more than than made sense, surely? It was a very well-kept alleyway, he couldn't spot a single piece of stray rubbish. The dumpster was closed, and shouldn't be emitting a smell this strong.

_Unless someone came in and meddled with the garbage before putting everything in order again..._

There were two lids on the dumpster, one for organic waste and inorganic. He flung one open, and then the other.

Atobe's sixth sense, if he'd ever had one, was screaming.

For once, he didn't bother worrying about niceties. He headed for the organic section, filled with vat-grown peel and last night's dinner scraps. "You search that one," he ordered "I'll take this one."

Oshitari raised an eyebrow. "Taking the messy section for yourself?"

"Just do it, Oshitari." The other boy, thankfully, took the hint, as they began foraging.

About a minute later, he spotted the stray finger, poking out of a tangle of fishbones, crumpled paper and thick, unidentifiable liquid. Wrinkling his nose, he leaned into the blue metal bin, and pulled.

Oshitari stopped working and turned to look as Keigo pulled first an arm, then a torso, and then the whole corpse out.

It was a girl, no more than about five feet tall. Keigo reached out to grab it before the entire body could sag to the ground. It was cold and clammy as it brushed against his hands, his wet clothes. Her hair was long and tangled; it looked like it'd had an encounter with what used to be Chinese stir-fry.

He leaned down and laid her out on the ground, face up.

"Nice legs," Oshitari said.

"Be quiet, won't you?" Oshitari might be a medic, and hold a professional's ennui when it came to corpses, but there were times when his sense of irony grated on Keigo, who suddenly felt light-headed.

"What's going on, Atobe? Oshitari turned and looked at him. "You know the girl, don't you?" he said sharply. "Who is she?"

"I do." Keigo felt strangely detached, as if there were two processes going on in his mind at once. One part of his brain was speeding ahead, making political calculations, creating lists of things to do.

The other part had no idea how to react.

"Her name was Kotoha," he said, finally. It was no longer raining.


	2. Chapter 2

_NB:Very mild spoilers for those who haven't read the recent manga chapters and don't know who Kotoha is. If you can tell what's canon, and what's my crazy AU invention._

**Chapter 2**

Keigo could feel Oshitari's eyes on him as he moved about the room, straightening the ornaments on the mantelpiece. Who was responsible for cleaning his study this week? It must be one of the girls; Kabaji would have remembered, when moving the figurines to dust the shelves, that the statuette of Aphrodite went next to Ares and on the opposite end from Hera and Athena.

It was mid-afternoon. Outside the converted office building that acted as Hyoutei headquarters, puddles of water were slowly evaporating under the sunlight. All along the street, trendy young people sat in outdoor cafes, or sauntered down the street, sipping tea and sporting elegant new bioaccessories.

The trick to maintaining a gang territory, Sakaki had told him once, was to make sure it didn't look like one.

"She wasn't dressed like a runner," Oshitari said, from his position by the door. "Not a jogger, either?"

Keigo curled his lip in distaste at hearing the word, a newly coined (and desperately uncreative, in his opinion) term for the females who accompanied runners and - usually, but not in Hyoutei – ran brothel houses for the syndicates. "If she were, Oshitari, wouldn't you have heard of her?"

Oshitari placed a finger on the bridge of his nose, adjusting his glasses – a foolish affectation; nobody had _needed_ to wear glasses for at least two hundred years, not on the major planets, at any rate. "There's no need to be so insinuating, Atobe. Why should I pay for what I can easily get for free, in safer environments?"

If Oshitari hadn't been a genius medic (graduated at fourteen; third youngest in the history of Shin Tokyo); and a damnably good fighter, would Keigo have throttled him long ago? No, he decided. He had more self-control than that.

Although sometrials were more worth bearing than others. He watched, uneasy, as Oshitari's eyes narrowed in recollection. "I remember now," he said. "Gakuto had to deliver a letter once, to New Hokkaido. That was the girl, right?"

_Atobe-sama: Here is the information you were looking for. I hope it helps. Love, Kotoha-chan._

_Atobe-sama. I know you're not the type to celebrate Valentine's but I heard that you like dark chocolate, so I made these for you. From Kotoha-chan._

_Atobe-sama. You've never been very impressed with me before. I guess I have too much pride to keep writing. Here is a last present. Kotoha-chan._

He set his mouth in a grim line. "She was the Tsubakikawa manager. Not a bad runner, despite the unfortunate choice of allegiances-" _She would have come down to Hyoutei in a heartbeat if I'd asked her to. _

"Hmm." Oshitari pursed his lips. "She's rather attractive for a runner. But what would she be doing in Hyoutei? And why would Akazawa be looking for her? For that matter, why would Mizuki want to hide her body?"

"Are we certain that's what he was there for?"

Oshitari snorted. "He was either hiding the body or looking for it, and with his data, he had more than enough time to unearth the body if he'd been looking. So," he asked, toying with the handle of the door, "are we going to find out?"

"It's none of our business." It _wasn't_, Keigo insisted to the voice in his head.

Oshitari gave him the _sure, whatever you say_ look, twisted the handle and flung the door of the study open, allowing a skinny, petulant bundle of energy to enter the room. "Yuushi, we're done with the autopsy."

Oshitari raised an eyebrow. "So soon? You're getting more efficient."

"I'm always efficient, Yuushi, what the hell are you talking about?" Mukahi Gakuto flounced across the room, sank into the armchair in front of Keigo's desk. "Hey Atobe, you ready to listen?."

He stretched himself out, half-yawning. His scarlet hair was as neat as Oshitari's was unkempt: Mukahi Gakuto, Hyoutei's resident cat burglar and recreational substances expert. Between him and Oshitari, there wasn't a single chemical in Shin Tokyo they didn't know about.

Keigo turned away from the cabinet, took his seat behind the desk. "Let's hear it." He placed his palm face up on the desk; was it paler than usual? Pull yourself together, he thought to himself. Kotoha's death had not been his fault; none of this charade was Hyoutei's responsibility.

So why was he taking such an interest?

"...death by strangulation, between twenty and twenty-two hundred hours last night. She seems to have been drugged beforehand, nothing major, just a mild soporific."

"That's logical," Keigo said. Kotoha was no street fighter, but she was strong enough to have given Mizuki significant trouble.

"The dental ID matched the ones in the records for Kobayashi Kotoha – not that I think it's her real name, but the records are pretty good, standard identifying details aside. The dental records were taken from the last time she went off-planet."

"We're still analysing the genetic material found on her clothing. Hopefully it won't turn out to be stuff she picked up while in the rubbish heap."

Oshitari interjected: "Did you ask Kabaji to run a background check?"

"Of course, what do you take me for, stupid? I asked him to pull the records on Akazawa as well.

He should be done within an hour."

Keigo looked across the room at Oshitari, who was still leaning against the doorframe, head bent in thought. "Something on your mind, Oshitari?"

Oshitari looked up. "I was simply wondering what interest Akazawa Yoshirou takes in the matter. He's not the type to interfere with Mizuki's doings; mostly he just sits back and lets things play out."

"Well, she's a cute girl, maybe he wanted to keep the body." Keigo glared at Mukahi. Really, what was with that pair's strange obsession with off-colour jokes? Particularly ones involving necrophilia.

A knock on the door spared him from having to ponder the subject in any depth.

"Yo, fearless leader. What's the story?" Oshitari moved out of the way as Shishido Ryou walked in, twisting his baseball cap in his hand. - another outmoded fashion. One day, Keigo thought, he would have to call in all his squad leaders for a wardrobe revamp.

Shishido walked up to the desk. He threw a sharp glance at Keigo: "Atobe. You look like hell."

Well, it wasn't as if they made it an organisational goal to cultivate good manners and positive thinking at Hyoutei, but Keigo could wish his squad leaders were a more encouraging bunch.

Footsteps sounded on the landing outside, and Ootori Choutarou appeared in the doorway, a concerned look on his face. "Are you all right, Atobe-san?" He was dressed in track pants and a deep blue jumper; probably fresh from the gym.

Typical Ootori: wholesome and ridiculously analogue. Unlike Shishido, whose body was a miracle of reconstructive nanosurgery, or Taki Haginosuke, who acquired bioaccessories as frequently as he bought clothes, Oostori had little in his body besides what his genes had placed there.

Then again, when your genome had been tampered with as much as Ootori's had, perhaps you didn't particularly need mechanical upgrades.

Putting the white-platinum hair (a feat of gene splicing in itself) and suprahuman strength aside, Keigo was glad Ootori's parents had had the foresight to buy him a set of psionic genes. The younger boy's powers rated a respectable 7.2 on the Empathic scale, and somewhere around a 5 in telepathy and kinetics. He was nowhere near Keigo's level, of course; but he was more than good enough to handle the mid-level tasks that invariably required doing in a group like Hyoutei.

And Ootori was still a match for the likes of Fudoumine's Ibu Shinji and even for Oshitari, even if he wasn't one of the _real_ psionics, as Keigo regarded them.

Seigaku's Fuji. Yamabuki's Sengoku. Sly-eyed Saeki Kojirou of Chiba. Niou Masaharu and Marui Bunta of Kanagawa. And of course, Yukimura.

Keigo forced his attention back to the present, where Ootori was still looking at him, frowning.

"Ootori, Shishido. How may I help you?" He looked at Shishido, who was scowling, and then Ootori, meeting each boy's gaze squarely. _When my performance as president of Hyoutei falls below par, then you'll have the right to know about my state of health. Until then, feel free to wonder._

Not that _that _pairwouldn't spread the whole story, eventually. Mukahi gossiped as much as any Hyoutei jogger, and Oshitari was worse.

Well, Keigo had more pressing concerns than worrying about gossip.

_Or petty murder between minor gangs_, the inner voice nagged at him.

"How can you help us? Atobe, the word on the street is that Sakaki and Chief Superintendent Inoue are headed for a showdown. You remember the Runner's Code of Compliance Inoue submitted to the High Commissioner? Well, it's been approved.

"That's just so stupid," Mukahi shook his head. "If we wanted to work with the police, we wouldn't have become runners in the first place."

"Well, they've done it for centuries with hackers and phreakers," Oshitari commented. "And Seigaku's example suggests that there are runners who are willing to take up those conditions."

"Mukahi's right," Shishido said. "Runners don't mix with police. It goes against what we are. And," he scowled again, "I don't know what Sakaki is thinking, but the news came at lunchtime. He's had plenty of time to ask us to prepare for a fight."

"He's probably busy in Kanagawa negotiating with Jyousei Shounan," Keigo said calmly, although he felt a presage of violence run through him. A vision? He might have to sit down and precog that later.

Outside, the sky was growing cloudy again. Keigo leaned over to flick on the light switch, hidden behind the holoprojector. Golden light flooded the oak-and-mahogany study, softening the crimson of Mukahi's hair, the scars on Shishido's left temple, the hard planes of Oshitari's face.

Oshitari, Keigo was interested to notice, had the unfocused look of a precog with a vision coming on; was he picking up something Keigo hadn't?

"What is the news on Tezuka?" Oshitari asked, adjusting his glasses again. He was looking straight at Shishido.

Shishido folded his arms against his chest. "I don't know," he admitted, slowly and with obvious reluctance. "It's the best-kept secret in Shin Tokyo. But Oishi's made so many moves in the past three days – alliances with Fudoumine, with Gyokurin, with the police – that I doubt he's acting without Tezuka's go-ahead. Which means that Tezuka's at least well enough to talk, or jack-in to the Matrix."

"He will be back within ten days, and at full strength." When Keigo looked at him, Oshitari smiled. "That's my precognition time limit, as you very well know. And don't ask me for details of the vision; I didn't see anything other than Tezuka, caught in some minor fracas."

Mukahi made a rude gesture. "That's going to be annoying! I knew you should have killed that guy when you had the chance, Atobe."

"That's why I came, to tell you that Tezuka was returning." Ootori stepped into the room, shut the door behind him. He smiled rather wanly. "But it looks like Oshitari beat me to it."

"You knew that Tezuka was coming back?" Shishido turned, and he sounded as startled as Keigo felt.

"Ah, Jirou contacted me on my caller." He held up the wrist communication bands that were standard issue for every runner in Hyoutei – not like Ootori's wristcomm was anything like standard. "He said he met Yukimura on the Tennis Hub."

The Tennis Hub was a VR space on the Matrix; it was a frequent haunt of Kanagawa runners and hackers. Keigo felt a frisson of tension run through him and spread to everyone in the room.

"Yukimura – talked to Jirou on the web?" That was Oshitari, who was rarely flummoxed.

Keigo's patience snapped. "That's it," he said. He stood up, shoving his desk chair back as he did so. "I've had enough of Jirou's habits. He's been stalking Marui Bunta for years. I put up with it when he started following Fuji Syuusuke around as well, but he's going to get himself killed, or all of Hyoutei compromised, or both, if he doesn't pull himself together."

"It's not all that dangerous," Ootori protested. "Fuji Syuusuke is no longer interested in fighting Jirou, now that he's avenged his brother. And Rikkai doesn't believe in unnecessary violence."

"I have trouble with their definition of 'necessary',' Keigo said, face darkening.

Shishido gave him a Look. "_You're_ one to talk."

"Anyway, we should finish listening to what Ootori has to say," Oshitari said. If he took any interest in the friction crackling in the atmosphere, he showed no sign of it.

"Uhh..." Ootori scratched his head. "Jirou was in the Tennis Hub, looking for Marui, like Atobe-san said, and then he came across Yukimura. Who was behind an avatar, of course; but it looks like when he saw Jirou he decided to show himself."

"He passed on three messages. Firstly, Tezuka will be coming back soon, and he'll be at full strength for the first time in three years."

That was one. Keigo sat down again, leaned forward, using his elbows to prop himself up. "Go on."

"Secondly, he's sorry about Kotoha, but please don't give in to your feelings, as it will cause trouble for both Rikkai and Hyoutei, in the long run. For now, it's important that Fuji Yuuta stays with Mizuki."

"Yuuta's still at SeiRu?" Mukahi said, incredulous. "Even after that Echizen told him the truth?"

"As far as we know," Shishido confirmed.

"Damn, I don't know how anyone thatsmart with weapons systems could seriously think Mizuki was giving him Wada calcium supplements? I mean, sure he was on a cocktail, half of which were placeboes, but you'd think he had the brains to do a chemical test_. I_ wouldn't go on anything Yuushi offered, without checking first."

"Fuji Yuuta trusts Mizuki," Keigo said quietly. Privately, he thought it was at least half the elder brother's fault. Fuji Syuusuke had always protected Yuuta, always fought his battles for him; never given the younger boy a reason to suspect those in authority. "The third message, Ootori?"

"The final message was this: Yukimura says you and Sakaki still hold a chance of winning this game, so try to make it interesting for him. In the meantime, feel free to borrow Jyousei Shounan for the upcoming encounter with the police."

"The bastard," Shishido muttered. "He wants us to decimate ourselves going up against Seigaku, and then move in and sweep up all the leftovers."

No, Keigo thought. That was typical of Sanada, who was notoriously, dangerously efficient; but not of Yukimura. Yukimura's reasoning was never so simple.

It was common knowledge that a naturally kind disposition was a prequisite for high Empathic ability.

Yukimura Seiichi was a level 9 Empath. That was enough to unnerve Keigo. Almost.

He flipped open the control keyboard on his desk, and tapped on several buttons. Mukahi looked on, curiously, from his curled-up position in the armchair.

"Who are you calling?"

"Yukimura," he said. The Rikkai president's number was not publicly known; the one Keigo was using now was the call number for the executive holocomm, which the Rikkai leadership seemed to take turns carrying, going by Keigo's past experiences.

They waited for the call to go through. After about a minute, the holoprojector whirred to life.

And produced a rather solid-looking three-dimensional image of a tall, spectacled young man, wearing a green tie and slacks, about to skewer Mukahi through with a rapier.

"Oi!" Mukahi reacted; somersaulted right over the back of the armchair just as the image-rapier stabbed through the space where he'd been, and then flicked upwards.

The the second image appeared in mid-air at the end of the rapier; the body a another young man, blood streaming from wounds in his neck and torso. He crashed into Keigo's cabinet before vanishing, it being beyond the scope of the holoprojector to produce an image in the middle of solid wood.

Keigo made a note to himself: switch to flat-screen mode before future attempts to vidcomm with Rikkai.

"The ninth, Niou-kun. Will that be all?"

Keigo turned in time to see Shishido scrambling out of the way, as a third hologram appeared.

Wild, white hair; eyes like winter frost. Rikkai's precognition psionic, Niou Masaharu.

"More than enough for now. We've got a call. As I'm sure you've noticed."

Yagyuu Hiroshi bent down, and wiped his sword on the clothes of one of the casualties around him – by now, Atobe's office was filled with the images of dead people, as the holoprojection gained detail. He stood up and bowed to Keigo. "Atobe-san. My apologies. Your call came at an awkward time for us."

"Yeah, finishing off Tsubakikawa took a lot longer than we expected," Niou said. Shishido took another step away from the hologram.

Out of the corner of his eye, Keigo saw Oshitari start. For all his cleverness, Oshitari wasn't quite ruthlessenough to handle Rikkai"Tsubakikawa..."

Yagyuu turned. Even with blood spattered on his hands, he was still impeccably polite. "Oshitari-kun. It's been a long time since we met, hasn't it?"

Yagyuu Hiroshi. The only medic in Shin Tokyo ever to graduate at thirteen.

Oshitari flushed, but managed to stay calm. Keigo wouldn't have expected less of him. "A long time indeed. I was aware of your taste for violence, but I wouldn't have expected it to develop to this extent."

"If old acquaintance permits, I might suggest that you have more than a slight taste for conflict yourself, given your current choice of colleagues." He sheathed his rapier in one smooth motion. "Nevertheless, I do regret the degree of brutality that was called for today. The Tsubakikawa syndicate were under the misconception that we were responsible for the death of their manager."

Keigo rapped his fingers on the desk. "Thank you for being candid, Yagyuu-san; we are aware that St. Rudolph is very likely the guilty party."

"They are in fact the guilty party," Yagyuu confirmed. "Yukimura-san and Niou-kun both precognised the event, more than a week ago."

"Must have been some _serious_ event, for two Kanagawa psionics to pick it up."

"We take our strategic planning seriously, Shishido-kun." Implying, of course, that other syndicates didn't.

Keigo raised a hand. "Enough, Shishido," he ordered. "We would expect nothing less from Rikkai," he said, nodding to Yagyuu.

Although Shishido was right. Kotoha's murder had evidently set in motion some major train of events, events affecting Rikkai it self- and if it affected Rikkai, it probably affected every syndicate in the Kanto reigion. At any rate, it more than justifed Atobe's interest in the matter.

He brushed that thought aside; since when did he have to justify his decisions to anyone other than Sakaki? And Sakaki wouldn't be concerned with this; it was too minor for him.

"We called you because of a message that Yukimura-san relayed to us. What are your intentions regarding Jyousei Shounan?"

It was hard to tell with those glasses, but Keigo instinctively felt Yagyuu was gazing straight at him. "Regarding that, Yukimura-san has not made his plans known to us. I suspect he may not be certain, himself."

Taki had once commented, irritably, that it was remarkable how many of these life-and-death leadership decisions were made on _instinct_.

"Our vice-presidents have gone down to Yokohama to meet with Sakaki-san and Hanamura-sensei. I am sure an agreement will be worked out. Jyousei Shounan has always been a strong ally, but if they show an inclination to expand their field of associates... for the present, Rikkai is more than willing to overlook past differences, in the interests of defeating a common enemy."

Sakaki was not someone who usually relied on instinct. Atobe wondered how the negotiations in Kanagawa were panning out.

"I have one last question for Niou-kun. Why did Mizuki kill Kotoha?" He didn't ask if Niou knew the reason; the bastard most likely _did_.

Niou looked at him. Aggressive and inscrutable. It was a common rumour that precognitives, especially the very powerful ones, were strange, unearthly people; difficult to understand, difficult to form relationships with.

That rumour was false. But people like Niou Masaharu no doubt perpetuated that myth.

In the end, it was Yagyuu who spoke. "Sometimes, Atobe-san, there are reasons. But then there's also human emotion. Thank you for your call. I hope we meet again under better circumstances."

The holograms faded as Niou cut the commlink.

Atobe didn't waste time wondering about the Rikkai duo's mind games. "Ootori," he said, standing up. "Get Jirou off the net and put him in a normal bed; we may be due for trouble soon, and he needs to be in fighting condition. Oshitari, you finish handling the Kotoha case. The rest of you, back to your normal duties. Keep an eye out for anything unusual."

He would miss hearing Kabaji's report, but Kabaji was more than patient when it came to such delays. He grabbed his jacket off the nearby coathanger, and his squad leaders parted to make way for him as he headed towards the door.

"Where are you going?" Shishido asked.

"To visit Mizuki Hajime."

He left the door open, leaving them to stare after him as he headed up to the roof garage, where the flyers were kept.

End Chapter 2.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**  
Keigo's flyer was not a standard one. About three times the mass of your average Low Altitude Flying Vehicle, it came with twin water foils for sea landings, heat and oxygen support for higher-than-average altitude travel, and enough artillery to bring down a fighter plane. All this gadgetry, when retracted, folded neatly into the long metallic body of the flyer, about half the size of a military car and twice as sleek.

Taki Haginosuke had given the flyer a recent revamp – not without considerable grumbling, since it was Haginosuke after all, but Keigo was willing to put up with a certain level of annoyance, in exchange for the highest expertise money couldn't buy. Haginosuke was as style-conscious as he was efficient, something Keigo was grateful for when he considered, say, Inui Sadaharu's patchwork machines - "Miracles of invention and disasters of fashion," a Rokkaku runner had once put it.

His own flyer sported glittering black paintwork; its wings, thin and curved, emerged noiselessly when you activated the security fingerpad; and the engine, when you unlocked it with the keycard, came to life with a gentle, delightful purr.

Keigo swung himself into the driver's seat, strapped on the safety belts, checking fuel levels and wind speed – both optimum, which he was rather pleased about, given how unpredictable the weather had been today.

The propellers whirred to life, gaining speed as the flyer rose up, over and above the tall slender buildings that were frequent in the heart of Hyoutei territory.

Shin Tokyo was divided into twenty-five administrative wards, in contrast with the old Tokyo back on Earth, which had twenty-three. There was little geographical correlation between the two cities, although it was fashionable at the moment to single out districts and name them after places from the old metropolis: New Shinjuku, Nueva Shibuya, Shin Harajuku.

The wind lashed at his cheeks and tugged at his clothes as he flew, navigating corners and gaps between buildings. Below, the streets were filled with shoppers and street vendors. Hyoutei territory was mainly commercial district, and a significant portion of gang income came from protection schemes - although Sakaki being the traditionalist he was, the lion's share of Hyoutei's money came from smuggling: still the classic runner's activity two centuries after the planet had been colonised.

For a moment Keigo recalled being ten years old; his tutor teaching him about the runners: how they'd started out as interplanetary smugglers, hence the name. By the time Nippon and Shin Tokyo had been founded, the runners had diversified into nearly every form of criminal activity possible (and a great deal of legitimate activity as well), embedding themselves so deeply into the culture and infrastructure of planet Gibson that government authorities were hard-pressed to dislodge them. In Shin Tokyo, certain sectors of the criminal world had made attempts to revive the traditional _yakuza_, with little success; runner syndicates had completely occupied the available niches.

Keigo had learnt all this detail in avid fascination, displaying an enthusiasm he usually reserved for studying ancient languages. But he'd never imagined that he'd be living the reality one day.

He jerked the control knobs and swerved upwards, narrowly escaping the bright green flyer that had just careened around the corner. Keigo's lips twisted in disapproval. That kind of driving was almost criminally bad. He was unsurprised to see at the controls of the other flyer the round and placid face of St. Rudolph's vice-president, Nomura Takuya.

Of all the strange and unpredictable things Akazawa had done in his time as SeiRu president, appointing Nomura as his deputy had to rank fairly high on the list.

Keigo soon spotted St. Rudolph headquarters, a lovely five-storey amalgamation of warm red brick and neo-Victorian architecture that dwarfed the surrounding townhouses. The upper garage, large enough to store at least eight flyers, had been artfully arranged to resemble a traditional Victorian roof: steeply angled, with jutting windows and bellicose ornamentation. A well-concealed landing pad for flyers lay at the back of the roof.

Keigo twisted the control knobs so that the flyer flew up, and hovered right above the building before sinking downwards for a perfect landing.

The infodevice on his flyer came to life the second his wheels touched the roof: it was the silken voice of Mizuki Hajime speaking: "Atobe Keigo. Nomura-kun told me you were coming. Come right in; I've already unlocked the doors. I'll be waiting in the drawing-room."

Something about that voice always made Keigo want to _electrocute_ something.

He stood up, swung himself out of the flyer. It was unbecoming, he reminded himself, to have someone so unimportant affect his state of mind.

Up close, the St Rudolph building was as elegant as it looked from the air. The main door was seven feet tall and made from beautifully panelled oak; true to Hajime's word, it swung open easily as Keigo turned the bronze doorknob, revealing a set of stone steps leading downwards.

St. Rudolph had once been one of Nippon's three largest syndicates, and even if a combination of poor leadership and encroaching competition from Yamabuki and Fudoumine had eroded its influence, it still retained enormous wealth, as attested to by the range and quality of artwork that decorated the stairwell. For Keigo though, the ostentatious decoration – Botticellian digital art, silver crucifixes, holographic sculptures of Roman gods – simply served to accentuate the fact: St. Rudolph was dying.

Keigo couldn't find it in his heart to blame Akazawa, either, although allowing Mizuki Hajime to remain in the gang was one of the stupidest things he'd ever seen a runner president do. The St. Rudolph syndicate had collapsed under a succession of poor leaders; it would have taken a far stronger leader than Akazawa Yoshirou to resurrect the fortunes of the gang.

He reached the bottom of the stairs, only to encounter the brooding face of the aforementioned Akazawa Yoshirou.

Keigo looked curiously at the St. Rudolph president. Akazawa looked like he was in bad shape: his eyes were dark-rimmed with lack of sleep, his long brown hair dull with lack of care. His jeans and shirt, always casual to begin with, looked positively unkempt.

But it was the expression on his face that caught Keigo's attention: some mixture of tension and slow anger, containing something deeper that Akazawa's usual bouts of temper. Akazawa tended to yo-yo between periods of extreme indifference, in which he sat back and and let Mizuki run the show; and short-lived flurries of action. The latter left no one in doubt as to who really held the authority at St. Rudolph: Mizuki might be their strategist, and present himself as the syndicate's spokesman, but in the end, it was Akazawa's lead that the runners followed.

"I heard you found Kotoha's body," Akazawa said, gruff as ever.

Keigo glanced at him. "How does it concern you if we did?"

The answering spark in the other's eyes made him relax a little. That was more like the Akazawa he knew. "If it concerns me, then it concerns me, Atobe. Tell me if Mizuki killed her."

"And how would it change things if he had?" Keigo asked, watching Akazawa's eyes. He could pry the information out of the other man if he had to: Keigo was Hyoutei's strongest telepath - not that there was a surfeit of telepaths in Hyoutei; he and Ootori were the only halfway competent ones. But he prided himself on not having to rely on extra abilities in order to read his opponents' moves.

Akazawa's back straightened, and for a minute he was the dark, intimidating leader Keigo occasionally caught glimpses of. "Then I'll kill him."

Keigo could feel his brows rising. "Try not to make a mess on the carpet when you do."

Akazawa snorted. "Asshole. You don't know the first thing about what's going on here."

"I don't bother thinking about things that don't concern me, Akazawa." He stepped past the St. Rudolph captain, ready to go into the drawing room. 

"Really? So why'd you come to visit, then?"

As if he was going to dignify that with a response. But he paused, right outside the ornate black doorway that led to the drawing room.

"Oi, Atobe," Akazawa said. Against all good sense, Keigo turned to look back at the tanned shadow of a face. "Kotoha had it bad for you, you know. Really really bad."

Keigo turned away in disgust. "I'm not responsible for how other people feel," he said to the door.

Akazawa's reply came just as he stepped into the drawing room: "That's true enough."

#

Mizuki Hajime was as usual beautifully dressed: spider silk shirt and loose dark trousers; a gold wrist communication band shining on his right hand. His black hair was soft and gleaming, brushed to perfection. There was a black infodevice attached to his belt. 

"Lovely to meet you. It's been a long time, hasn't it? Not since – oh, just after the whole fiasco with Fudoumine. Would you like some tea? Darjeeling, Pearl Dew? Or would you prefer a herbal blend? There are some new varieties that have just come in from off-planet; I ordered them in last week. Here, take your pick." Mizuki nodded at the lacquered box that sat on the coffee table, holding an array of tea bags arranged by type.

Keigo waited for him to finish speaking and said, "Cappuccino, thanks. With almond syrup and goat's milk."

Mizuki frowned. "Oh well, if you _insist_," he said, standing up. "I'll need to go to the kitchen for the coffee machine; in the meantime, make yourself at home."

Keigo watched him as he left the drawing room. "Not in a good mood, are you, Mizuki?" he murmured.

He glanced around the room, which was one of the loveliest he'd ever seen – and Keigo had seen dozens of elegant homes in his lifetime. Everything in here, from the soft velvet couches to the ornaments in the cabinet, was of superb quality, chosen in exquisite taste. Painfully exquisite taste, Keigo thought. Typical Mizuki, to overcompensate on everything he did; Akazawa, born and bred to the St. Rudolph leadership, would simply have used whatever furniture was on hand, and to hell with the colour coordination.

Akazawa had succeeded to the presidency of St. Rudolph nearly three years ago, at the age of fifteen. Back then the syndicate had been in worse shape than it was now; a territory loss of nearly half a ward, Keigo recalled, exacerbated by the death of several key leaders at the hands of the police. Akazawa had been quick to establish his authority, quick to restore order; but beyond that, serious restructuring had to be done, and on the advice of his allies, he'd recruited Mizuki, who was then known as a Net hacker from Yamagata, as his strategic advisor.

Mizuki was one of the rare hackers with a good grasp of leadership and interpersonal strategy; in his early teens, he'd helped mobilise the first successful Net attack on corporate banking in years. Dozens of hackers had siphoned millions of yen off the top twenty companies on the Nippon stock exchange.

If Mizuki had made a mistake, it was assuming that the tactics that worked for him as a hacker were going to work in the world of the runners.

From day one, Mizuki had begun recruiting runners from other syndicates for his leadership team, Rokkaku's Kisarazu Atsushi and Seigaku's Fuji Yuuta being the most notable examples. The ensuing resentment among the old SeiRu runners had been entirely foreseeable.

Over the last few weeks, Keigo had been hearing that St. Rudolph was rapidly polarising into two groups; the ones who supported Mizuki, and those who supported Akazawa. It was this, combined with the sudden flurry in the runner world at large, that had no doubt ended in the street fight yesterday.

Mizuki didn't seem hurt, however, and neither did Akazawa, leaving Keigo to wonder whose blood it was that he and Oshitari had discovered this morning.

Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside, and the smell of coffee wafted in, followed by Mizuki, smiling graciously as ever. "Here you are, Atobe. I hope you find it up to your standards."

Keigo took the cup. "New Malayan blend. I commend your taste," he said, savouring the rich, earthy flavour of the brew.

"I'm glad it suits you," Mizuki said, sipping his own tea. "Now, how can I help you, Atobe? I have to say your visit wasn't wholly unexpected."

"Probabilities greater than 3 must be taken into account, right?" Keigo placed the cup back onto its saucer. "But I forgot; you're not as keen on probabilities as that data pair is."

"There are always ways to alter probabilities, to get the result that you want." Mizuki twisted a curl of his own hair around his index finger. It was a bad nervous habit of his. Keigo had seen him do it on several occasions . "There is a 99 probability that you came here to ask me about the murder of Kobayashi Kotoha."

Keigo had a sudden urge to grind Mizuki's nose into the floor with the heel of his boot. 

"Well," he said, "this should be a fairly straightforward meeting, then. Tell me everything you know about Kotoha's murder, and I'll leave without incident."

Mizuki was still lingering over his chrysanthemum tea. "Why should I? As I understand it, Atobe, there are no obvious advantages to my giving you the information you want."

Keigo's temper was going to snap if he didn't do something about it. "Mizuki," he said, leaning forward, "I don't think you understand the situation. You can either tell me what I want to know, or I can rip the facts straight out of your mind. You're familiar with my abilities, and you know I'll have no qualms about doing it."

"Your abilities?" Mizuki mused. "You psionics are so... fortunate. Unlike the rest of us, who must compensate for what we don't have."

Keigo's eyes narrowed. He didn't know whether Mizuki was simply diverging into a bout of petulance, or trying to manipulate the conversation. Either way, Keigo was in no mood to accommodate him.

"I remember Yukimura sending me a message on my wristcomm two days ago. He warned me not to interfere with the relationship that was growing between Yoshirou and Kobayashi-san, saying that it would be to my detriment if I did," Mizuki said. "

"The relationship. Between Akazawa and Kotoha." Keigo had suspected something since the encounter with Akazawa in the corridor. But still--

"Rather more on Yoshirou's side than on the girl's, or rather, that was my impression." Mizuki finally placed his cup down; steam was still rising from it in slow, lingering spirals. "Did you know, Atobe, that Kobayashi-san was peculiarly attracted to powerful men?"

Keigo didn't reply. For a moment he was back in the alley, pulling Kotoha's body from the dumpster.

"_Atobe-sama, won't you take the bento I made, just for once?"_

"Ah come on, Atobe, take her present. I hate seeing girls cry." That had been Shishido, he recalled..

"_Kotoha had it bad for you, you know. Really really bad." _

"Atobe?" Mizuki tapped the couch in impatience. "It was your wish to hear the story behind Kobayashi Kotoha's death. Unless you've lost interest--?"

"You seemed to be telling me about Kotoha's romantic interests," Keigo said. "I was waiting for you to get back on-topic."

"My, my; are you so impatient? Don't be so quick to overlook details; they might turn out to be important. Perhaps that's the advantage to not being psionic; it forces us to be more attentive to the data. Which can sometimes result in predictions more accurate than those produced by precognition. Now, where were we? Ah yes; I was about to mention the reason for Kobayashi-san coming to Tokyo."

"If you mean that she came to spy on Seigaku, that's hardly news. Seigaku territory has been inundated with spies in the past five weeks; it's common knowledge that Tsubakikawa was one of the gangs who sent a representative."

"She spent two weeks there, far more time than mere information-gathering would warrant. From all accounts, she spent a great deal of time following young Echizen around. Rather fascinated by him, I gathered."

"Everyone's fascinated by the Boy Wonder, Mizuki. Even you, although I can hardly see you admitting to that."

"If you wish to discuss my feelings on Echizen Ryoma, I'm quite happy to diverge, I assure you."

"I see no need to discuss what's already written plainly on your face." 

If Mizuki had been the kind of person who _bristled_, he would have done so.

The question that had been nagging at Keigo for the past five minutes finally bubbled to the surface: "How did Akazawa and Kotoha meet each other?"

Mizuki shrugged delicately. "According to Kaneda-kun, they met each other via the Net. Some virtual reality space, I assume."

He was certain Mizuki knew more than he was letting on. But Keigo was happy to let Mizuki be tight-fisted about the less salient data, as long as he revealed all the most important details. "And when did you become aware of the fact that they knew each other, or that they were romantically involved?"

He felt a peculiar flash of irritation go through him as he finished asking the question.

"She came to observe our virtual reality training sessions two or three times, as I did with Tsubakikawa. Are you not enjoying your coffee, Atobe? Are you sure you wouldn't like some tea instead?"

"The _question_, Mizuki."

"Well, if you must know--" Mizuki put the teapot down; he'd been on the verge of pouring out a cup for Keigo. "It was obvious from those visits that the two of them were familiar with each other. I thought little of it at the time. Yoshirou's liaisons are not infrequent, and Kobayashi-san's methods of gathering data are well-known."

"And you weren't in the least worried about St. Rudolph security being compromised, given Kotoha's reputation?"

Mizuki raised an eyebrow. "Have you ever been worried about Kotoha compromising Hyoutei's security?"

_No, but Hyoutei isn't St. Rudolph_. They weren't almost wholly dependent on data for their operations, for one thing. Aloud he said: "But it seems that you had cause to worry in the end. Was Kotoha too good at avoiding your poisons? Is that why you had to strangle her?"

Mizuki turned his head, looked at some vague point in the distance, an abstract, distended look in his eyes. "I was rather surprised at how moody Yoshirou was being," he murmured. "Jealousy over Kobayashi-san and Echizen, of course, but it wasn't until I heard Yuuta and Kaneda discussing the matter that I became aware of this."

"And so you did kill her."

"Of course," Mizuki said, and added silkily: "You've been expecting me to confirm the fact ever since you walked into this room, haven't you?"

"I can't think of anyone else who would be so crude as to bury a girl at the bottom of a dumpster." It was a lie, of course; Mukahi would have done it in a pinch. Oshitari too, possibly.

"It was efficient, you must admit. If my sources are right – and they have never been wrong – nobody came close to suspecting what was hidden there until you and Oshitari came along."

Keigo's throat tightened. He clenched a fist; tried to steady himself. " When did you decide that Kotoha was enough of a threat to be eliminated?"

"When Yoshirou made it clear that he was set on a long-term relationship, of course. A relationship that threatened to be destructive for the future of St. Rudolph. St. Rudolph has a great future, one that cannot be compromised by the addition of someone potentially disloyal to the syndicate."

_Someone like you?_ Keigo thought. But he'd already made up his mind as to what he was going to do; he wasn't interested any longer in the verbal sniping back and forth. "So when you realised that Akazawa was in love," he noted.

"Love," Mizuki said. "Yukimura spoke of that, in his message. What is love? Is love real? Oh, I'm not trying to start a debate here; I won't deny that love is real. But wouldn't you say that there are degrees to reality?

"I can tell that you are real, Atobe, because you're sitting in front of me. Drinking a cup of rather expensive speciality coffee. But how real are your, well, _telepathic_ thoughts? They certainly didn't work at all against Sanada. How real are your visions of the future? They failed you rather spectacularly against Tezuka.

"How real is Yukimura? No one has ever seen him outside the Net; he never gets more vivid than the virtual reality he inhabits. For all we know, he might be a figment of Yanagi Renji's imagination, created to help control the runners. Both theories would fit the data equally well.

"No matter how real love is, it isn't real enough to base decisions on. To create data from. Yoshirou may be heartbroken for life. On the other hand, he may be back to his old self next week. Who knows? Why risk something as important as St. Rudolph for something so insignificant?"

"Do you really want to know what those telepathic thoughts can do?" Keigo said softly.

He could feel Mizuki recoiling as Keigo reached out for his mind, _pushed_ into his memory. Mizuki was no weakling; he was putting up a good fight against the mental onslaught.

But Keigo was stronger, by far the stronger; within three seconds, he'd cracked his way in. A flood of memories and connections came rushing through the gap: 

"You were afraid, weren't you? Afraid that with Kotoha around, Akazawa would have no need for another strategist. Particularly one who'd worked so hard at undermining his authority. You were afraid that Akazawa would set you aside, appoint his new girlfriend to your position.

"You mentioned that Kotoha was attracted to powerful men. Was it terribly degrading for you that Kotoha saw Akazawa as the more powerful among the two of you? After all the illusions you'd built up about being the power behind the throne."

He moved in like a blade of lightning, twisted Mizuki's mind into a feedback loop so they were both caught up into seeing the same memories: Kotoha arriving at St. Rudolph, sly and smiling and beautiful; days of tension and gossip and sniping at one another; Akazawa roaring at Mizuki, Mizuki screaming back. The spiked drink, Mizuki's well-kept hands pressing into her white neck...

When it was over Keigo stood up, reached for the slim plasma gun he always kept by his side. Mizuki's eyes were unfocused, dreamy; the usual side-effects of a telepathic operation as invasive as the one Keigo had just done. He'd managed to drop his tea cup; it was lying on the floor nearby, liquid seeping into the carpet.

"Even precognitives have to deal with probabilities." Keigo said. "Yukimura knew this, and tried to prevent my doing what I'm about to do. He failed. But you're even worse, as you didn't even foresee this in your data.

"Any fool can look at Sanada and look at Rikkai and see that Yukimura is a real person. Data can always be transcended. Yanagi Renji and Inui Sadaharu realise that, and that's why they'll always be better strategists than you are."

He raised the gun and aimed it. Although Mizuki still seemed dazed, his eyes widened.

"Let me," said a deep voice coming from the door. Keigo glanced to the side, saw Akazawa's dark outline filling the doorway.

"Akazawa. I thought you might show up soon." Akazawa wasn't so stupid as to have left this conversation unmonitored.

The St. Rudolph captain entered the drawing room, looking straight at Mizuki the whole time. "So you did kill her."

"As if you didn't know," Keigo said, his voice hard. His mind was still a little dizzy from rummaging through Mizuki's memories – _disgusted_, he told himself, not dizzy.

He was glad that Kotoha had finally gotten over her crush on him – wasn't he? He slammed a lid down on the thought before it could continue; it wasn't worthy of him.

Akazawa shrugged, looking uncomfortable. "I wasn't sure."

"Only because you didn't want to be sure." He looked at Akazawa as he spoke, but paid attention to the periphery of his vision to make sure that Mizuki, who was starting to recover from from the telepathic attack, didn't make an attempt to escape. "Akazawa. You've spent three years running from your responsibilities as a leader. You can stay here with your snake of an advisor and a syndicate that is outwardly profitable and inwardly rotten. Or you can tear everything down and start from scratch. The choice is yours."

Akazawa looked back at him, and this time there was steel in his gaze. He nodded.

"Well," Keigo said. "Do it, then."

"Not until you put the gun down," he said, stubborn as ever.

"If I put it down," Keigo said patiently, "Mizuki will reach for the poisons he keeps in his left pocket, and he'll knock us all out before making his escape. For practical reasons, I can't put my gun down until you've aimed yours at him."

Akazawa was slow, very slow in bringing out his own weapon; so slow Keigo felt an unnatural twinge of worry as to whether Mizuki was going to bring out some new surprise of his own. But Mizuki just stood there, face grimaced into a strange expression.

"Akazawa," Mizuki said finally, and there was something intense in his eyes, something cold and angry and yet defeated. It was the most genuine expression Keigo had ever seen him wear. "I did a good job for St. Rudolph."

Akazawa looked at him, aimed the gun. "You did a great job, Mizuki."

A voice rang out in the corridor outside. "Akazawa-san, _no_!" But it was too late; there was a sharp flash of light and then Mizuki was slumped back against the couch, trickles of blood soaking through his shirt.

Two boys came running into the drawing room: Akazawa's dark-haired friend named Kaneda, and Fuji Yuuta, who always struck Keigo as being strangely ordinary-looking, particularly next to his extraordinary brother.

Akazawa turned to look at them. "Yuuta. You came back from Seigaku?"

Yuuta was very pale. His left arm, Keigo noted, was heavily bandaged from elbow to wrist. "You killed Mizuki-san."

Keigo slipped his plasma gun back into its holster. "Akazawa had good reason to do so, Fuji Junior."

Even the use of his detested nickname couldn't snap Yuuta out of his shock.

"Yuuta." It was clear that Akazawa was distressed, and not in any state to deal with his underling's emotional Issues. Well, it wasn't his room to interfere with another gang's business, but this little charade was rapidly going nowhere.

"Not to interrupt, Akazawa, but you're going to need someone to deal with the body quickly, and discreetly."

"I'll do it," Kaneda said. Keigo liked the boy immediately. If the St. Rudolph syndicate ended up falling apart, he'd recruit him for Hyoutei.

He said to Akazawa: "I suppose I don't need to remind you that a meeting will have to be called immediately, and the new organisational issues sorted out." Keigo turned to look at Fuji Yuuta. "I hope that your leadership team will have the good sense to stand behind you."

The younger boy was still very white. He shuffled his feet, but looked straight at Akazawa as he spoke. "I'm sorry, Akazawa-san; I think I need sometime to think about it. May I have permission to stay at Seigaku for a few more days?"

"Granted," Akazawa said. "You still have your flyer, right?"

Yuuta nodded, looking relieved. Keigo wasn't too happy about what Yuuta's decision meant for St. Rudolph. But it wasn't his place to stay here any longer.

"I'll be going now, then," he said. "Try not to make too big a mess of this place, okay? For what it's worth, Kotoha had good taste in men. If she couldn't have had me, you were a great second choice."

Akazawa still looked like hell; his face was drawn and exhausted. But the old aggression had crept back into his voice: "You're a bastard too, Atobe. See you around." 

Keigo was smiling as he left the room. But he was barely halfway up the stairs before a bone-deep weariness settled upon him.

_Yukimura. I guess you already knew I wouldn't listen to you._

Tell me, what were you trying to prevent?


	4. Chapter 4

"Kabaji."

There was no reply. Keigo's fingers closed around the doorknob, but didn't turn it. "Kabaji. Are you there?"

"Usu."

He whirled around. Kabaji stood by the tinted bay window just outside Shishido's room, holding a brown paper package in his right hand. Keigo took a slow breath.

"Where have you been? I haven't seen you since yesterday morning."

Kabaji bowed his head once, his face expressionless as ever. Knowing Kabaji, that would be all Keigo was going to get in the way of explanation. He let go of the doorknob. "Never mind. It doesn't matter. Have you heard from the others what's been going on?"

"Usu."

"Kotoha. The girl we used to know, from back – from back then. She's dead." The words felt strange on his tongue: surreal, like the first time he saw a boy his own age die. Like the first time he'd killed someone. "You remember her, right? I used to say she looked like a spoiled kitten."

He looked down the corridor. It was empty, but Keigo had been a squadron leader himself less than three years ago, occupying the room that now belonged to Oshitari. He knew how well sound carried on this floor. "Can you get us something to eat and meet me in my rooms in ten minutes?"

The other boy bowed again, then turned and walked down the corridor – perfectly silent as usual. It was a shame, Keigo thought. Kabaji would have made the perfect spy, if he weren't so conspicuous-looking.

He was not, however, so discreet that Keigo shouldn't be able to notice his presence when he was standing less than two metres away.

_I'm getting careless_. Sakaki would say something about needing to keep his emotions under control. Sakaki. He would be here tonight to to discuss the results of the dicussions with Jyousei Shounan.

He took the elevator upstairs to his rooms, which had initially formed part of the penthouse apartment. Increasing space constraints had necessitated renovations, and by the time Keigo had joined the syndicate the president's rooms consisted only of a master bedroom with ensuite, a small kitchenette and dining area, and a sitting room that Keigo had lined with bookcases when he moved in. The other half of the former penthouse comprised the executive meeting room as well as Keigo's study, plus a computer room with two neural link chairs for emergency VR access.

Hyoutei was prosperous for a runner syndicate; indeed, it was prosperous by any standards, except perhaps the ones that Keigo had grown up with. The lack of luxury didn't matter too much to Keigo, although Sakaki sometimes seemed to believe that it did.

He placed a thumb on the fingerprint sensor beside his front door and waited for the click before pushing the door open. Inside, the sitting room had that air of unnatural tidiness that indicated the cleaners had been in this morning. Keigo walked straight into the kitchen to pour himself a glass of mineral water, and then activated the music system while he settled down on a couch to wait for Kabaji. The opening strains of _Tristan und Isolde_ came drifting through the speakers located in each corner of the ceiling, causing him to close his eyes. How long had it been since he'd had a chance to go to the opera?

Perhaps he did miss the luxury, sometimes, although classical music was not one of the luxuries he'd appreciated when it was within easy reach. It was Sakaki who had taught him to love Wagner.

The doorbell rang. "You can come in, Kabaji; I didn't lock the door."

Kabaji was carrying a tray of meatballs and sweet chilli sauce when he came in; the kitchen staff always kept some snacks available for the boys. Keigo sometimes wondered if they prepared them especially for Ohtori and Hiyoshi, who for whatever reason were especial favourites with the ancillary staff.

"Sit down. Would you like something to drink? There's a half-finished bottle of Shiraz in the fridge; help yourself whenever you want."

Kabaji placed the tray on the coffee table and sat down down in the couch opposite Keigo's. There was a tension in his the line of his shoulders, Keigo noticed, that he had learned early on to associate with something bothering Kabaji. (Being Kabaji's friend for ten years was something like a degree in non-verbal communication in itself.)

"Mizuki Hajime killed her." He picked up a toothpick from the tray and speared a meatball. "That's why Akazawa visited the border of our territory last night; Mizuki tried to hide the body there, and Akazawa became suspicious. Do you know Akazawa was dating Kotoha?" He bit into the meatball; it was flavoured with cumin and sesame seeds. He took revenge for her earlier today. I would have done it, if he hadn't. I believe I owe her that much." Perhaps he owed the past that much.

"Usu." More in a neutral tone than in an affirmative one, though.

"Kabaji. Do you ever wish you could be back--" _Home_, he'd been about to say, but it would be a false word. Hyoutei was home now, for Kabaji as much as for Keigo. "It may come to that, if Seigaku continues with their plans to integrate with the police force." Even as he said it, the ridiculousness of the idea occurred to him. Could he go home, even if that turned out to be the best option? It would not be such a problem for Kabaji – as far as Keigo knew, he had parted with his family on civil, if not amiable terms. Even if the converse had been true and he _had_ left his family under the worst possible circumstances, it didn't change the fact that he was the sole male heir.

Keigo, on the other hand--

_No. I'm sure that I'm indispensable to the old man, no matter how many genetics experiments he's attempted in the interim._ It was far more likely that Keigo's identity would be exposed, and that he would be forced to return. Inoue Mamoru had the best intelligence network in Nippon. And if Seigaku chose to break the unwritten runner's code and reveal what they knew about the Hyoutei runners...

In fact, it would be safer to assume that they already _had_ broken the code, even if it didn't exactly fit with what he knew about Tezuka Kunimitsu.

"Kabaji." The change in Keigo's tone seemed to have surprised the other boy, whose eyes held a questioning look. "Effective from tonight I'm ordering red-level security throughout all Hyoutei reputations. The shipment to the Bundesrepublik has to be sent tonight, and all other runs are to be placed on hold. I don't want anything illegal worth more than ten thousand dollars here in our territory." He pulled out his infodevice and began tapping out a message to the other squadron leaders. "I'm not sure what's happening with Seigaku, but we should assume the worst for now. The rest...well, Sakaki may debrief us tonight."

Kabaji nodded. He was fingering the brown paper package in his hand: an odd tic for Kabaji. Keigo frowned. "Is that package for me?" he asked. "Who is it from?"

Kabaji shrugged and held it out to Keigo, who took it and peeled off the brown paper.

Inside was another layer of wrapping, this time in silver tissue paper. The blue wave-shaped emblem stuck to one corner caught Keigo's attention. His eyes narrowed.

"The Rising Sea? Rikkai again?" He found the edge of the silver paper, and tore. The object inside was small, hard, and cool to the touch; he let the bits of crumpled paper fall to the floor as he pulled it out to have a look.

It was a flower made of crystal, sixteen-petalled, about the size of a child's hand. Keigo held it up to have a closer look; when placed near the light, it glowed with the colour of broken rainbows.

_An ice chrysanthemum?_ For the second time today, he felt completely paralysed.

_They know. _

#

He'd sent Kabaji away soon after that, and messaged Sakaki to let him know that he would be in VR for the next couple of hours: _Let me know when you're here and I'll come out as soon as possible._ For this particular investigation he'd chosen to use the computer room adjacent to his study; it was less convenient to use than the setup they had in the basement, but considerably more private.

He sat on one of the neural link chairs and parted the hairs at the back of his head, plugging link cables into the entry points that communicated with his cerebral cortex, cerebellum, and midbrain. Keigo had six ports into his central nervous system, which was twice as many as were usually installed; it was unusual, however, for him to use more than three.

He logged on; the world turned into grey space and a series of menus. Where to from here? The Tennis Hub would be the most likely spot, he supposed.

The main forum of the Tennis Hub today took the form of a set of street tennis courts set in Old Earth Japan. Not an infrequent incarnation; Keigo himself had 'played tennis' on these courts quite a few times, most frequently with runners from Seigaku and Fudoumine.

It was also where he'd met Tachibana Kippei's sister An, one of the more competent female runners in Tokyo. And also pretty, if her avatar bore any resemblance to her true physical appearance.

There were about two dozen avatars here today, but no one of interest that he could identify. It was possible, of course, that they were using a pseudonym like he was.

Only two people known to frequent the Tennis Hub were in the position to recognise Keigo's identity from the username Tannhäuser, and either of those two people would be able to lead him to the person he truly wanted to see.

As it turned out, the username was moot within five minutes, when he spotted Akutagawa Jirou in one of the subforums. The forum was depicted as a twenty-first-century Pocky store; the Second Squadron leader was sitting in a corner, stacking boxes of virtual Pocky on top of each other: milk, chocolate, strawberry, milk, chocolate, strawberry...

Keigo reached out and tapped Jirou's avatar on the shoulder.

Jirou looked up. "Ehh, it's you!" he said, springing to his feet. "What are you doing here?"

Keigo rolled his eyes. "Open up a private room. I need to talk to you."

"Sure!" Almost instantly, the landscape shifted around them; suddenly they were standing on a bridge beneath a blue sky, surrounded by a pine forest. Keigo looked down, and then wished he hadn't; the ravine below was dizzyingly realistic. It was a feat worthy of Hyoutei's best VR manipulator, although Keigo wished that his VR tricks were slightly more... useful.

"Why are you still here?" he asked. "I told Ohtori to wake you up two hours ago."

"Yeah, he came!" Jirou was bouncing up and down. "I told him I had to stay."

"Jirou, that wasn't a nice suggestion from Ohtori. That was an order from me." Even if it might be working out to his convenience now. "What made you think you could go against my instructions?"

Jirou looked crestfallen. "Ahh, I'm sorry. But it was important, honest, Atobe! Bunta-kun said I had to stick around."

"Marui Bunta said? So you're taking orders from Rikkai now, are you?"

Jirou had flopped onto the ground (well, the bridge), his legs spread out, propping his back into a sitting position with his outstretched hands. "He said Yukimura wanted to see you, so I had to wait here since I'm the only one who wasn't using a pseudonym. He said you would definitely come, and I was to take you to see them. So that's why I'm here. I'm really sorry, Atobe." He clambered to a standing position. "Atobe? Are you all right?"

_Am I just being manipulated by them? Is that it?_ He placed a hand across his face. _I'll see Rikkai destroyed before that happens_.

"Atobe?"

He blinked. Jirou's avatar was waving his fingers in front of Keigo's eyes. "Are you okay, Atobe?"

_Whatever the circumstances, even if I'm being manipulated, I have to meet him now. There's no other alternative._

"I'm okay, Jirou. Take me to see Rikkai," he ordered. "Now."

#

VR meetings with Sanada had always invariably taken place in the setting of a kendo dojo, except for once, when Keigo had grown tired of the monotony and transformed the area into the throneroom from Neuschwanstein. Today, however, Sanada was standing in a wide, formal garden in the European style, filled with classical sculptures.

Sanada bowed. His avatar, as far as Keigo knew, was almost an exact replica of his physical appearance, down to the Japanese sword he wore at his waist. (His swordmanship was as legendary in the VR context as it was in real life.) But it was the figure standing at Sanada's side that drew Keigo's attention.

"Atobe Keigo. It's so good to meet you at last."

Yukimura's avatar was well-known to all runners. Keigo had never personally seen it, despite numerous written communications with the man (or woman or child, or whatever Yukimura was); however, Jirou, Kabaji and Oshitari had all met him online before, and there was general agreement as to the details: Yukimura always appeared as an androgynous, strikingly beautiful child, with eyes and hair the colour of the sea.

The slim young man standing on the garden path was neither androgynous nor a child; in fact, he was about Keigo and Sanada's age. Strikingly beautiful – yes, Keigo would concede that.

"You're the one who called this meeting," he said. "I'd like to get down to business as soon as possible."

Yukimura inclined his head. "Certainly. I think it would be best if we continued the conversation alone. My apologies to the two of you." He nodded at Sanada, and then at Jirou, before waving his hand; the other two avatars disappeared instantly.

Keigo couldn't help rather liking Yukimura. It was difficult not to appreciate someone with that much style.

He said, "I think we have two things to talk about: one, the current imbalances among the Kantou syndicates; two, how you found out about my old identity. And what you plan to do about it."

A garden bench appeared alongside the path. "Would you like to sit down? I think this will be a reasonably lengthy conversation."

"Thanks, but I'm all right. I never saw the need for excessive verisimilitude in VR settings."

"Yes, you're quite grounded in reality, aren't you. How strange for an Ancient Studies expert." Yukimura sat down. "I too, agree that we have only two things to talk about. Tezuka Kunimitsu, and Atobe Keigo. I'd like to talk about St. Rudolph as well, but it's rather too late for words on that subject now, or so Niou assures me."

Now that Yukimura had taken a seat, Atobe found himself uneasy with their relative positions. Was Yukimura's sense of superiority so marked that he had no problem sitting down in front of a president from a rival syndicate? Even if it _was_ VR.

Still, it was too late to do anything about that now. _Again? So this is what it's like, dealing with a truly powerful precognitive._ "Tezuka Kunimitsu. The man at the heart of all this."

"No. Tezuka Kunimitsu is the shadow at the heart of all this, but there is someone casting that shadow."

Keigo felt a shiver run down his spine. Immediately he slammed down his extrasensory shields, cutting off all possible psionic communication with the other boy.

"Sorry. It's a bad habit of mine."

A bad habit? Even at a glance, it was obvious that Yukimura's VR control was the most nuanced that Keigo had ever seen; it made Jirou's VR abilities look like a joke. It made _Fuji Syuusuke's_ abilities look like a joke. Was it likely that someone like that would be in the bad habit of subconsciously projecting his Empathic gift?

"Do you know if Seigaku has broken the Runner's Code?" he asked, deliberately avoiding Yukimura's dropped hints. "From what I've precoged, they will soon, if they haven't already." It was the end for Ginka, although it was merely the speeding up of a process that would have happened naturally.

Yukimura smiled, beautifully, blindingly. His hands were folded in his lap. "Seigaku has not kept the Runner's Code for some years now."

"You're joking. How? Why have we not noticed before? For how many years?"

"Why are you here, Atobe? Why are you living as a runner? I think we both know that you have other places you could be. Pleasanter places. More important places." The Empathic nudge this time was definitely deliberate; Keigo could feel the pressure on his shields. _You're not the type to hold back, are you, Yukimura Seiichi?_ "Do answer the question. I promise you I'm not changing the subject."

The question took him back somewhat; still, the answer was so instinctive that it slipped out at once. "Because it makes me feel alive," he said simply. "Because I want to be here."

Yukimura seemed delighted. "Spoken like a true prince. Sanada would be rightly horrified at your words. But what about Tezuka Kunimitsu? He, like you, has a choice. Why do you think he chooses to stay here, on the streets of Shin Tokyo?"

_We all have choices, Yukimura._ Although as for Tezuka-- "There was a time when I thought I understood him better than anyone else did." _The fight, the battle, and the glorious death. Tezuka, I thought we were two of a kind_. He knew better now. "Today, I couldn't even begin to tell you his reasons."

"To understand the shadow, you must understand the man who casts the shadow."

"What shadow do you mean? The Tezuka family?" Keigo had met Tezuka Kunikazu once, as a child. The resemblance, when he first saw Tezuka Kunimitsu six years later, had been startling. "Do you think Tezuka is doing this in order to reconcile with his family?"

"No." Yukimura stared up, into the virtual sky. "If it was about his family Tezuka would never have become a runner in the first place. I'm talking about the person who truly controls Seigaku. The person who has controlled Seigaku for the last ten years."

Ten years? "You have to be joking. Yamato Yuudai is dead."

"So," said Yukimura, "is Atobe Keigo. Or so I believed. Even Renji believed so. To be honest, we believed that your name was either a pseudonym or a sheer coincidence. Isn't that foolish of us?"

Keigo shook his head. "It isn't. I'm sure that up till now you never had a precognitive vision that led you to believe that my identity was important to you in any way."

"Yes, although it is extremely odd. You're a Precognitive as well; I'll leave you to think through the implications of that for yourself."

Keigo did, and wasn't sure whether or not he liked the conclusion he came to. "That's irrelevant now. Evidently the thread of futures has become somewhat tangled."

"Yes; it almost seems as if up till now the future has been designed to protect you. Sakaki went to a lot of trouble to disguise you, didn't he? I wonder that he didn't make you change your name."

"There was no need to. It's not unusual enough as a surname that people would start asking questions."

"And not many people knew of your existence to begin with. Among those who did, it was widely reported that you were dead." Yukimura looked pensive. "The fact that you are alive is greatly interesting for me. As it will be for Yamato Yuudai."

"Does he know?" It was a bad idea to show a weakness like this, but Keigo was already the cornered rat here. It was not a pleasant experience.

"Since no one is hunting for you, it is safe to assume that he does not. I was eager to meet you before he found out, actually. "

"Do you plan on telling him?"

"Why should I? It would be offering him more power, and he has far too much of that already. To be honest, it would be more convenient for me if you were dead. It's just a shame that Sanada is just about the only person I have who is capable of killing you, and for some reason he's adamant about keeping you alive. He'd be even more determined about it if I told him who you really were."

"Do it yourself, then," challenged Keigo. "Haven't you done it before?"

Their eyes met.

Yukimura was the first to look away, but it did not feel to Keigo like he was backing down at all. "I'll keep your secret, for as long as keeping it a secret remains meaningful. The only ones at Rikkai who know are me, Niou, and Renji. If the others find out, it will not be through the three of us."

"I'm grateful for that." At the very least it bought Keigo time; time to think, and plan, and hopefully _do_ something to prevent what was beginning to look like the imminent collapse of the world. His world, that he'd worked so hard to create. "I have to ask, though; what's in it for you?"

"Let's see." Yukimura put a finger to his lips. "'Remember me when you come into your kingdom.' Is that enough of a bargain, for now?"

#

When he woke up, Sakaki was leaning against the wall in front of him. "You're finally awake. I've been waiting quite a while." He walked over and helped unplug the cables from Keigo's skull. "We have a great deal to talk about. I hope you're not too tired."

Keigo sat up, placed one hand on Sakaki's arm. "We have even more to talk about than you think, Father. Yukimura knows who I am."


	5. Chapter 5

Back in Keigo's rooms, Sakaki poured out two glasses of the unfinished Shiraz. "Drink. It will make you feel better. Or do you want something stronger?"

He shook his head. It was good wine, a souvenir from Sakaki's last trip to Old Earth; the bitterness of it brought Keigo's senses back to the world around him: wet alcohol, air currents, comfortingly immutable furniture, and the smell of Sakaki's cologne, classic citrus and neroli, underpinning the flavour of the Shiraz.

"Oshitari told me you'd had an eventful day," said Sakaki, setting his own glass down on the table. "From the first words you spoke when you woke up, it appears to have been even more eventful than I had cause to believe."

In the nine years Keigo had known him, he hadn't changed at all. Costly, colour-coordinated clothing. A face that could have passed for any age between twenty-five and forty. Deep blonde hair, elegantly combed.

("Grow it longer," Keigo had asked once, before he'd joined Hyoutei. "I bet you'd look like Apollo if you did."

Sakaki had smiled. "Child, it would never match your lost curls, no matter what I did.")

Keigo had left the glass chrysanthemum on the coffee table, next to the unfinished tray of meatballs. He picked it up now, and handed it to Sakaki, who turned it back and forth in his hand, examining the petals as they refracted light into multiple colours.

"I can put you on a ship off-planet by tomorrow morning."

Keigo's grip on the wine glass tightened. His nails dug into his palm. "...You must be joking."

"On the contrary, I'm more serious than I've ever been. Your security takes priority over anything else we may have to discuss today."

"I can stay secure without having to go offplanet! Yukimura's given me his word that he won't spread the secret."

"You wish to trust the word of a Yukimura? If it'd been Sanada who'd given you that vouchsafe, I might have been more inclined to accept that reassurance – but no. The fact that they have discovered your identity means that it can be discovered."

"It's precisely because he is a Yukimura that he found out." Couldn't Sakaki even see that for himself? That if his identity were so easy to Precognise then they would have been discovered by the old man's Oracles, years ago? Then again, Sakaki didn't understand psionic gifts, really, other than as something to be feared. "That and the fact that he has the most powerful Precognitive living working for him. It's just an unhappy marriage of coincidences."

"Coincidences breed more coincidences, particularly when Precognitives are involved. The Tezuka family, too, are in the position to discover your identity. Better, since unlike any of the Yukimuras, Tezuka Kunikazu has seen you before. I haven't distressed you with the truth before this," said Sakaki, "but you do look very much like your father."

Keigo smirked. "Even more than I resemble you, Father?"

"Let's be done with that joke." He looked down for his infodevice, and thus missed the abrupt disappearance of Keigo's smile. "There is another choice you could make, and that is to return. Given the current climate within the Upper House, your survival is by no means certain."

"Is the old man as ill as the news reports say?"

"Even worse, I'd say. I think he has more than passed the limits of what rejuvenating treatment can offer; succumbing to old age, however, has never been a hobby of his." Sakaki flipped his infodevice open, then looked at Keigo. "I believe he was – and is – genuinely fond of you in his own way."

"Of course. I'm the only thing keeping his precious Silver Chrysanthemum from the wolves and the Chitoses and the Sanadas." It came out more bitterly than he'd intended; Sakaki would not like that.

"You mean the Yamatos," corrected Sakaki. "It's true that the Sanadas have been very vocal about their ambitions, but the strongest blood claimant is the late Princess Minako's son, Yamato Daitaro. Your nephew, so to speak."

"Yukimura told me that Yamato Yuudai was still alive."

"It makes no difference to the succession, although having a competent politician champion their cause no doubt helps the Yamato campaign."

"You knew about this? Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

Still tapping at his infodevice, Sakaki replied: "Wouldn't it be better to ask yourself why you didn't know about this before? I thought I was past babysitting you, Keigo.'

He looked down, knowing that he was flushing; it had been a long time since Sakaki had last treated him as a child. _It's not relevant. It has nothing to do with me._

_So take the ticket and go offplanet. Leave it all behind,_ argued one part of him. _It's nothing you haven't done before._

Leave it all behind? There was no way he could do that. His place was here, no matter what was happening.

Even if the past somehow caught up with the present.

"Very well, I'll investigate Yamato myself. As well as Yukimura, and the other issues that have been concerning me." Sakaki stopped looking at his infodevice then; his eyes met Keigo's. "Don't send me away just yet. The benefits of my presence here outweigh the risks, and you know it. There's no one else who can keep the syndicate running. Oshitari can't, Ohtori can't, and Hiyoshi certainly can't.

"I'll precog all the futures. I'll make them work. I've done it before." Keigo looked at Sakaki. "You're not going to say something stupid, are you? Like, protecting me takes precedence over the safety of Hyoutei?"

"And what if I do say so?"

"Then you're a complete fool." Keigo's hands trembled; whether due to anger or something else, he wasn't sure. "What will you do then? Allow the police to swoop in and destroy the entire syndicate? Provoking even more investigation into your other activities. Didn't you tell me Shiba Saori conducted a search of your Roppongi offices last Thursday?

"Or were you going to _join_ Seigaku and ally yourself with Inoue Mamoru? Rikkai wouldn't be able to let that slide and you know it. Hyoutei holds the balance of power in Kantou at the moment. It's our greatest opportunity – and our biggest risk."

"Keigo." His eyes were drawn to Sakaki's again, this time with some reluctance on Keigo's part. "Remember the commitment I made to you eight years ago. Compared to that, losing my financial interests in Nippon is a small price to pay."

He was unable to say anything to that. He was nine years old again, curious and desperate, unable to see anything but the fascination of the adult who stood before him, golden-beautiful and impossibly strong, more unflappable than anything he'd ever seen – _except the old man._ "So you gave me Hyoutei because that's what I wanted, and now that I'm not capable of staying safe on my own, you're taking it away? How is that different from what the old man wanted?"

"I may have given it to you, but that doesn't mean you didn't take it for yourself. This," he swept his arm out to indicate the president's rooms, "is your own talent and effort speaking. Never doubt that, Keigo."

_Then let it be real. Let it mean something._ "Please," he said. "For my sake. Let me stay."

And just like that, he knew, he'd won the argument.

Never mind that it was immeasurably more risky for Sakaki to have Keigo discovered under his protection than to lose the syndicate. The police, after all, could only press charges; the old man would arrest, torture and execute.

_Forgive me, Father. But this is something I have to do._

#

He was woken up the next morning by a furious knocking on his front door, loud enough to bring him awake all at once. He reached for his wristcomm band, lying on the bedside table; there were no messages indicating the occurrence of an emergency, but the digital clock in the lower left corner informed him that it was 0548 hours, just early enough to make Keigo cranky. He got out of bed and padded towards the bathroom. Whoever it was could wait until Keigo was presentable.

Whoever his visitor was kept up the knocking for the ten minutes Keigo took to brush his teeth, comb his hair and change into a long-sleeved shirt and grey cotton slacks. Surely his knuckles must be bloodied by now? Keigo thought irritably. He would have liked to take a bath, but there was no way to relax with that relentless sound in the background.

He went to the front door and opened it. Oshitari was standing there, looking even more dishevelled than usual. He was still wearing the caterpillar-print pyjamas Gakuto had given him last October. He had forgotten to put on his fake glasses. It was quite possible, Keigo thought with distaste, that he had not even bothered to brush his teeth.

Keigo stepped back, pulling the door wide to let Oshitari in. "What do you want? I have to assume it's important, since seeing you awake before eight is nothing less than miraculous in itself. May I remind you that I possess a doorbell, an informations device, a wrist communication band, and an intercom, none of which you saw fit to use before attempting to break down my expensive teak door?"

"...I saw you dead. In a dream. Only it wasn't a dream." Oshitari's eyes were wild; Keigo's own sense of alarm increased when he saw how unfocused they were. Oshitari was barely out of Precognitive mode himself. "Someone killed you."

Would this run of bad news _never_ stop? Keigo pulled up a chair. "Sit down," he ordered. "Try to explain things to me in a slightly more lucid fashion. When exactly did you have this dream?"

Oshitari sat down, pushing away the tangled hair that had fallen into his eyes. "Perhaps half an hour ago. I woke up the moment it finished, so... I don't know when it was. You weren't here. You were a prisoner in a house somewhere. Really beautiful, in the ancient Japanese style.

"There was an old man and a woman arguing. They said something like, 'Is it really him?', and he said, 'It must be. The mark's missing, but that could have been removed surgically.' Then they argued some more – my vision wasn't really clear enough to tell what was happening – and then the woman nodded at a guard standing back there and he stepped forward and shot you in the head. You didn't even react. I think they had you drugged pretty badly. Then I woke up."

Keigo's hand had gone unconsciously to his right cheek, to where his mole used to be. "Is that all?"

"About all I saw, except for one thing. One of the guards that caught you was wearing the crest of the Four Elements." Oshitari took a deep breath. "Atobe. Who are you, exactly? What does the the Sanada family want with you?"

"Can we focus on the slightly more important fact of my impending death?" said Keigo. "My importance to the universe is well-established already, which is why I would prefer that the universe not go on living without me in it."

"I don't know how to change it." Oshitari looked up at Keigo; his eyes were gradually coming into focus. "I've never tried to changed the results of a vision before."

Keigo was incredulous. "You haven't? What do you use your Precognition for?"

"I don't. You know the limits of my precognitive ability. I thought...you would be able to work through it better than I could."

"Well, I haven't seen anything so significant as my own death, I'm sorry to say."

He'd heavily taxed his abilities last night, though, trying to work out the best possible way to solve the impasse the Seigaku situation was becoming. It would be surprising if he had a single spontaneous vision within the next three days.

_So between last night and this morning, my death has become a probability. Someone else must have discovered my identity._ But how? Through Yukimura? As far as Keigo knew, Upper House politics hadn't changed much since his childhood days. There should be no love lost between the powerful, ultraconservative Sanadas, and the Yukimuras, who were largely famous for their libertarian leanings and their patronage of the arts.

For that matter, there was no evidence that Yukimura Seiichi was in fact, a member of the Yukimura family.

"I could talk to Kenya," Oshitari said. "There are some fairly powerful precognitives among his friends."

"Absolutely not," Keigo said. The situation was complicated enough without getting Shitenhouji involved.

"Well, what are we going to do? Ask Rikkai for help? They probably _want _you dead."

Which was quite true, but not as soon as within the next ten days, Keigo decided. In the short-term, an unstable Hyoutei would do nothing for Rikkai's situation.

"What you are going to do," he said, "is take a shower, get dressed, and meet me in the meeting room at seven-thirty. Kajimoto Takahisa's team will be in by eight o'clock, and I need to debrief all of you by then."

Oshitari raised an eyebrow. "So early? Is there something urgent?" The squadron leaders, Keigo knew, would have stayed up well past midnight last night, implementing the red-level security measures that he'd ordered.

"We're entering St. Rudolph territory today. We don't have a choice."

#

"The Sasabe father-son team will be leading the raid on St. Rudolph." Keigo looked around the room. "I'm sure everyone here is familiar with their reputation."

Chief Inspector Sasabe and his teenaged son were well known for their capriciously harsh measures against syndicate members. Two of Atobe's runners had, during his days as a squadron leader, gotten themselves arrested for under the elder Sasabe's jurisdiction; getting them out had required judicious application of telepathy to several members of the Patrol. _Sekozawa still has those scars on his cheeks. Ozu wasn't able to use his right hand for three months._ From the reports Atobe had heard, their cruelty had, if anything, intensified since their run-in with Echizen Ryoma one year ago.

Kajimoto Takahisa nodded. He was sitting at the front of the room, hands folded in his lap; the picture of studied calmness. "Hanamura-san told me that there were body bags being carried out of the Ginka warehouse last night."

Several murmurs ran through the room. Gakuto nudged Oshitari, while the Tanaka twins bent their heads together, deep in some wordless conversation. Keigo nodded at Kabaji, who tapped on his infodevice. A map of St. Rudolph territory appeared on the wall at the front of the room, the surrounding territories marked out in various colours.

"Seigaku's territory lies here. It runs all the way to the Miyazaki Mountains." He used the red light on his infodevice as a pointer to highlight the large patch of blue to the east of Seiru territory. It was the largest territory belonging to a single syndicate, undoubtedly the legacy of Echizen Nanjirou. "Up till last night, Ginka had control of the land to Seiru's west. We should assume it is now completely under police control.

"If Seiru falls under Patrol control, the police will have an unbroken line of territory from the eastern border to Shin Roppongi. I shouldn't have to explain to you what that would mean for our transport and communication lines." The Kakinoki and Gyokurin syndicates, to the west of Ginka, had disintegrated a few years back, allowing the police to take over substantial chunks of that area. That too, Keigo remembered, had been the work of Rikkai.

"But is a direct confrontation with the police the best way to act?" asked Oshitari. "Covert operations is one of St Rudolph's strengths. Perhaps it'd be better to wait and hope that the police don't find anything suspicious."

Keigo looked at him. "Not with the authority that the Sasabe family has been given. I saw them carrying laser rifles in my Precognition – and using them on the Seiru runners. They weren't simply arresting runners and searching for evidence; they were shooting them. I can only think that they know what I have just explained to you, and are trying to cut off our operation routes."

Although the police surely, should not be so sure of winning a confrontation with the runners. Atobe doubted that Oishi or Tezuka would consent to outright battle with the other syndicates, and without Seigaku's help, even the entire Tokyo police had little hope of winning against a union of the runners. They'd almost have to bring in the military. Yes. That would do a great deal to inspire the citizens' confidence in their government.

Unless they _knew_ the critical state that Seiru was in, and were thus confident of a victory today. But how would they know, and be able to prepare, on such short notice? Had Inoue gotten hold of a good Precog?

"You will have heard of the death of Mizuki Hajime as well. Given that a significant number of the runners there were personally loyal to him, rather than to the syndicate," - Fuji Yuuta and Kisarazu Atsushi had already left Seiru to reunite with their respective siblings - "I think it is fair to say that St. Rudolph is currently only running at two-thirds of its usual strength."

"We will attempt to remedy that lack of strength. The Second Squadron will reinforce the Ginka border. The Fifth Squadron will be based in the southwest. Kajimoto-san, I'm counting on your runners to stay near headquarters, and fend off any air attacks."

Kajimoto nodded. "You can count on us."

Negotiation as to who owed whom what favours would have to wait until after the fight was over, but Keigo did not think that today's proceedings would be detrimental to Hyoutei. _Jyousei Shounan wants to get out from under Rikkai's influence, too. I can tell._ He watched Kajimoto in conversation with Tanaka Youhei. _Hanamura Aoi no doubt thinks she can somehow influence Yukimura and Sanada through this unbalanced alliance, but I doubt that her president will stand it for long._

"All right. Are we all clear? Anyone not directly involved in these operations, you're free to go." He nodded at the other squadron leaders as they left; some of them, especially Shishido and Gakuto, would be vexed at not being able to participate in the action, but there was more than enough work around Hyoutei at present to keep them more than busy.

In fact, if he didn't feel so strongly that they could not afford to lose today's battle, he would have only deployed the Second Squadron. Better to overwhelm them, and discourage the police from ever trying again, than to err on the side of weakness.

#

"Atobe. May I ask you what the hell you think you are doing?" Akazawa was wearing black combat pants today, with hiking boots, a nylon jacket with matching laserproof vest, and a belt with holsters for multiple firearms attached. Battle-ready. Kaneda and Nomura stood behind him, similarly dressed.

"Akazawa. Shall I assume that today, for once, you are actually in control of things?" He saw Akazawa's fist clench at his side. "Don't try to hit me. I promise you're not fast enough. We're about to save your territory from destruction, so I suggest you have a hard think about how you plan to display your gratitude when this is all over."

"We. Don't. Need. Your. Help."

"Akazawa-san. We do need the help." Keigo's estimate of Kaneda's intelligence was continually going up. Then the boy looked up at Keigo. "Atobe-san. I'm grateful that you're interfering like this today, but I must ask that you don't do this any longer. Hyoutei interference in St. Rudolph affairs will not be tolerated after today."

Keigo waved dismissively. "I assure you that we would not spare you the time of the day, if our interests weren't bound up in this. The less I can see of you, the better." He turned and began to walk towards the exit. "You may need help sooner than you realise, though. If you raised your neck a little higher and looked around, you might realise that there's a lot more going on in the world than your petty political problems."

He felt Akazawa move behind him. "Akazawa-san, _don't_," said Kaneda's voice. Keigo smiled. Akazawa excelled at crisis management. And riling him up was the best possible way to get him into action.

Kajimoto was standing a block away from Seiru headquarters, just outside a convenience store. "Everyone has taken their positions," he said. "And we've warned all the civilians in the area of the possibility of an impending fight."

"Good work." He then spoke into his wristcomm. "Jirou. Are you there?" He heard a long, drawn out yawn. "Jirou! Stop yawning, and tell me whether your squadron is in position."

"Oh, it's you, Atobe! Everyone is fine here. We're all ready whenever they come. Huh? Wait, there's a patrol car coming now. Sorry, Atobe, I've got to go!" The wristcomm beeped. Keigo looked up at Kajimoto, and nodded. It had started.

"I'm going to fly out and have a look around," he said. He opened the storage compartment and pulled out his safety helmet. "Your priority is to keep Seiru headquarters unbreached, so don't worry about moving unless any of the Patrol get within range."

"Got it." Kajimoto's eyes were an unnerving shade of violet. "Take care."

The flyer whirred to life. Keigo stepped on the accelerator and drifted up and forwards, past the St. Rudolph headquarters. The wind was stronger today than yesterday, and it was nearly impossible to keep the flyer steady while hovering. Not the ideal conditions for an aerial battle.

_Jirou should have no trouble with the Ginka border, and short of Seigaku entering the fray, I don't forsee Hiyoshi having any immediate problems._ That left the south. He steered the flyer to the right, keeping at an altitude of about a hundred metres above sea level.

It took him about twenty minutes to get to the southern edge of St. Rudolph territory. He scanned the horizon for anything of interest, then landed on the roof of a nearby shophouse. No signs so far. Would they come? He let his thoughts wander through the possibility, relaxing into the precognitive state. It took five minutes of keeping his eyes closed before he saw the the flock of black-and-white flyers coming through the sky.

_About twenty minutes from now. Hmm._ He activated his wristcomm again. "Kajimoto. I expect an aerial force to reach you within the hour. About sixty to eighty flyers."

Sixty Patrol members – that wasn't a small team at all. How seriously was Inoue Mamoru taking the subjugation of St. Rudolph? He slid the keycard into its slot to start the engine. There was no use staying here; it would be futile engaging a force that size by himself.

His wristcomm beeped again. "Atobe. Are you there?" It was Oshitari's voice. "I just had another Precognition. You need to go to the Seigaku border right now. InSec's on their way there."

Keigo placed his left hand on the handlebar. "Are you quite sure?"

"As sure as I am that you're going to die in ten days, if we don't do something about it."

"Save it for later." He hung up, and guided the flyer upwards again, this time speeding northeast.

For the fifth time in two days, what the hell was going on?

#

Hiyoshi contacted his wristcomm about twenty minutes later. "Atobe-"

"It's all right, I'm on my way there already." When he arrived at the border, Hiyoshi was hovering above the highest building there (belonging to an insurance company of some sort), staring towards the east.

Keigo looked in the direction of his gaze, and swore under his breath. A procession of armored trucks was travelling down the main road that ran from Seigaku territory into Seiru, followed by at least fifteen silver cars. All the vehicles bore the emblem of the chrysanthemum. _Internal Security. There's no doubt about it._

"They've got flyers waiting as well," Hiyoshi said, nodding at a building in Seigaku territory about four hundred metres away. It was too high too see clearly, but Keigo could just manage to see the outline of what looked like unusually large LAFVs. Military-issue, no doubt.

"The land vehicles are probably firearmsproof. Do we have anything that could take them down?"

"Nothing long-range; some of the grenades and the stronger lasers might work. I've told everyone to aim for their tyres, but it might be better if I went out there first and tried to take down some of the trucks." .

Keigo looked at the younger boy. _You don't want to risk anyone else, do you._

Unless they could force the members of InSec out of their vehicles, pitting the Hyoutei runners against them would be tantamount to suicide. Even without the armoured vehicles, it would have been a chancy thing; InSec operatives were much better trained than the Patrol.

Not a single Hyoutei runner had died during Keigo's presidency so far, and he wanted to keep it that way.

"We'll do it together," he said. "Have you got the weapons ready?"

Hiyoshi looked surprised, then reached into his storage compartment and handed over a laser rifle and a dozen grenades.

"We go low, so that they can't target us," said Keigo. It was a good thing that these flyers came with ground wheels. "You take the front trucks, I'll take the rear. _Don't_ get yourself killed." He twisted his flyer and began floating downwards, Hiyoshi after him.

_I'll create an Illusion and confuse the drivers. I doubt anyone who works for InSec will be be fazed for long, but that should be enough time to bring a few of them down._

Out of the corner of his vision, he saw the one of the InSec flyers take off from the roof of the building Hiyoshi had pointed out earlier. Damn. They'd been spotted.

He hit the ground and sped through the streets, Hiyoshi alongside him, grateful that at least the area seemed devoid of civilians. One less headache to think about.

The first of the flyers was within shooting range within one minute. Keigo raised his stun gun – they required less precision than the deadlier weapons – and hit the rider in the arm. The flyer crashed into a nearby window and fell to the ground; Keigo and Hiyoshi sped past without even looking at the falling vehicle.

Hiyoshi got the next one and Keigo the third, but there were too many of them. Keigo retracted his wheels and rose in the air, sticking close to the buildings to keep his back covered. "Looks like we're not going to get near the road vehicles before cleaning these guys out first."

"Understood."

Although the task was easier said then done; how many of them were there, exactly? He narrowly avoided two laser shots, and then brought down a fourth flyer; they were heavier and less manouevrable than the Hyoutei LAFVs, which was a small blessing. He cast a telepathic illusion, which gave Hiyoshi room to shoot down another three flyers. The street below was rapidly becoming cluttered with ruined vehicles.

And then six of the silver-white vehicles fell out of the sky, with a splash of blood.

Keigo barely had time to process this fact before another three InSec flyers went down, and four bright red flyers came hurtling through the empty space they left. At the forefront was a small, red-headed rider, helmetless, blowing a massive pink bubble of gum.

_Marui Bunta?_

A laser shot went past Marui's head harmlessly; he grinned. A flyer about five metres above him exploded; Keigo felt the heat as it descended to the ground.

Within a minute, the only InSec flyers in the area were either on the ground or heading towards it, and four Rikkai runners were hovering in front of Hiyoshi and Keigo.

"Atobe-kun. It's good to meet you again." Yagyuu Hiroshi inclined his head.

"Yukimura woke us up this morning to send us over here; he said you'd need the help," said Marui, spitting out his gum. It fell to the ground and landed straight on the forehead of an unconscious InSec rider. "_Shikuyoro_! Jirou's told me so much about you. I feel like we're best friends already. This is Jackal Kuwahara," he nodded at the helmeted rider to his left, "and the one to my right is Kirihara Akaya."

Akaya shook his head impatiently. "Come on, Marui, we don't have time for introductions! There are vehicles to burn over there. And people."

"Are there only four of you?" asked Keigo.

Marui pulled out a fresh piece of gum, this time green-coloured, and popped it in his mouth. "You don't need more than four of us. Heck, if you want to withdraw you can, Atobe-kun – don't bristle like that! Of course you'd be helpful, not all of us are as injury-proof as the kid here."

Yagyuu said. "Marui-kun will be using his abilities to dismantle the vehicles. I would appreciate it, Atobe-kun, if you joined me and Akaya in the initial assault; I think your psionic shields are strong enough to withstand their telekinetics."

"Sounds like a fair plan. What about Jackal and Hiyoshi? I assume you'll need some cover while you're working on the vehicles," Keigo said to Marui.

"Don't worry, Jackal's an expert at that. As for Hiyoshi-kun," Marui turned. "Regroup your runners. We'll need backup to finish off these guys."

Marui and Jackal flew up, towards the rooftop; Yagyuu, Keigo and Kirihara headed out towards the armored procession, maintaining their altitude.

When they got within a hundred metres of the vehicles Atobe was suddenly overwhelmed by a sudden, total, sense of panic. He drew his mental shields together.

"It seems that they have an Empath," said Yagyuu. "Kirihara, can you place yourself between us? The protection may help."

_An Immune?_ The curly-haired boy edged his flyer in between Keigo's and Yagyuu's; at once, the pressure on Keigo's shields faded.

In front of them, the first vehicle and second vehicles exploded. Men were already hurrying out of the vehicles behind, shooting up in the sky at Marui and Jackal, who were using a large billboard for cover.

Kirihara licked his lips. "All right. Let's go!"

They headed forward towards the scene of chaos and flame, Atobe's vehicle almost half a second behind. Because, just then, a thought had occurred to him, one that threatened to make sense of a great deal of the past twenty-four hours.

_There's someone with both an Immunity gift and a Precognitive gift masterminding all this. And that person has power over Internal Security._

Which definitely begged the question of who.

That question would have to wait. He dodged a grenade that was exploding on the ground and began to fire his gun, even as Kirihara and Yagyuu rained bullets all around him and the smoke and scorched smell and fire rose into the air, transforming the streets of Shin Tokyo into a battle landscape.


	6. sidefic: Thoughts in Empty Space

_Context_: Takes place following the events of The Forming of the Sixth and before the main _Streets of Nippon_ story; Tezuka's defeat to Atobe lands him in a coma-state, followed by a period where he's exclusively stuck in VR space, waiting for his body to wake up.

**Thoughts in Empty Space**

When Kunimitsu wakes, his mind is heavy with the trace of old dreams.

Never mind that one's not supposed to dream within a coma, or at least the type of coma he's trapped himself in. The doctors have explained this, in terms of brainlobes and synapses and the regeneration of white matter. Yamato too, has explained it, in somewhat less technical language. This doesn't help Kunimitsu understand it at all, even though he understands most things. Tries to understand most things.

He tries to understand Fuji, although Fuji doesn't really want to be understood. He tries to understand Oishi, although the task is too simple for his mind and light-years beyond his heart. He understands what it means to be a runner. He understands what it means to fight. He understands that he is a Tezuka, and although he has yet to fully realise the weight and beauty that name carries, he understands enough. He never stops trying to understand.

He no longer tries to understand Yamato. Some things will never be comprehended. Some things have to be taken on childlike faith, as the stuff of dreams.

The dreams cling to him like leaves shaking in a mountain wind, like the sound of water running downhill. They remind him of the long sleep, and the time before – and the time now, an unending inbetween.

Yamato greets him into the now as if it is five years ago: It is summer. There is natural light everywhere. The air and soil are clean.

Yamato is smiling. Not like Mother, whose smile means nothing at all. Not like Father, whose smiles mean everything Kunimitsu can't understand yet. Yamato just smiles.

Kunimitsu looks around at the fake world, at the vast, formless void of space surrounding their feet, and concentrates on that smile.

"You took your time waking up." Yamato is dressed for fishing, or perhaps walking through a desert. His image is less than perfect, the reflection of a skill that will never match Kunimitsu's own. It matters not; it is Yamato. "You really frightened us, Kunimitsu."

Kunimitsu tries to remember in the face of Yamato's explanations, but all the memories are dreams, pain, and Atobe Keigo's glorious fighting.

"What should I do now?" he asks.

"Be yourself." Yamato holds out a hand with too much hope in it. "I'll come again."

He disappears into reality, leaving Kunimitsu to deal with fuzzy data, imaginary visions, this world which is his only world for now.

#

One of the earliest things Yamato taught him was to keep his own counsel. "The curse and nature of the gift," he said, slipping the bait onto its hook.

Kunimitsu watched the point at which the lines entered the water, the monofilament almost the colour of the sea, and waited. It was good practice. He has been waiting ever since.

He waits for Seigaku to be ready. He waits for Echizen to either understand what he's doing or denounce him, with the breathtaking purity with which Echizen decides everything.

Most of all, he waits for Yamato. But waiting for Yamato is like waiting for fish to bite; he is, after all, the one who taught Kunimitsu how to become unreadable.

#

They come to see him. Oishi first, worried and caring and organised. Kunimitsu cannot separate Oishi from the work he brings; he is, first and foremost, grateful for the work Oishi brings. What else can one do in virtual reality?

"When should we tell them?" Oishi wants to know. The truth cannot be hidden much longer. He has the charts and figures to prove it. Reality has not waited for Kunimitsu; reality has rushed on, inexorably, and is impatiently waiting for him to catch up.

"Not now," he says. "Not yet."

"But soon," insists Oishi. He does not have to insist. The soon is inevitable. Inui must have guessed by now. Fuji must suspect.

Echizen is unlikely to know, but he is unlikely to be surprised. Kunimitsu has only managed to surprise Echizen once, and he is still paying for the price of that achievement.

#

Be himself? Being himself can't pass the time. Ryuuzaki and Fuji and Momo all visit, but that only occupies a few hours in any given week. Echizen comes once, and stays longer than expected. Kunimitsu did not think that Echizen could understand a language other than strength.

He is, nevertheless, Echizen. He goes where the wind and his immutable power take him. When these years are over, when Kunimitsu has accomplished all that he has tried for, these wild days in Seigaku, when he can stand without burdens again, it will be a privilege if Echizen bothers to turn back, to look over his shoulder.

He thinks he can give Echizen something that he needs, but the truth is that it doesn't need to be Kunimitsu. It could have been Atobe. It could have been Yamato.

It could have been Yukimura.

It's Kunimitsu who seeks out Yukimura and not vice-versa, although it would surprise everyone who knows them, although nine times out of ten it would be Yukimura who does the searching. Maybe it's because Yukimura knew that he would come, because Kunimitsu is not as unreadable as Yamato.

"Welcome to my world," he says, with a smile Kunimitsu can't even begin to decipher. He didn't come here to see the false face, the false child's eyes. All Yukimura is is Yukimura's beautiful broken mind, and touching it, for Kunimitsu, is like open wounds embracing open wounds. Like the mingling of blood.

"No shields at all? Not even Sanada dares to do that."

He wants to ask Yukimura how he has borne it for so long, but fears to add hurt where there is already obviously so much.

"I think I'm tired of looking up at you," says the child, and changes into someone Kunimitsu's height, with eyes that blaze with the passion to change worlds. It is the kind of passion Kunimitsu believes he sees in Yamato.

#

"A country where children do not die of guns, drugs, or on the streets. That's something worth sacrificing for, don't you think, Kunimitsu?"

Kunimitsu thinks so. He has thought so for years. He thinks so, even in this place where he can do nothing but wait.

He thinks the time is coming. You cannot predict when fish will bite; still, he thinks the time is coming.

It is coming.


	7. Chapter 6

More than half a decade ago, in another lifetime, before Hanamura Aoi had discovered the thrill and intellectual challenge of criminal activity, she'd been a genetic scientist on the planet Nova. Keigo had, in fact, met her there when he was ten years old. He hadn't liked her then, an impression that hadn't changed after two years of dealings with her syndicate, despite the fact that she was, in many ways, a female version of Sakaki Tarou. They were long-time associates, her acquaintance with Sakaki predating Keigo's by several years; probably they had slept together in the past. Perhaps still did.

Under Hanamura's guidance, Jyousei Shounan had built up a reputation as the region's specialists in illegal genetic modification, a business that was as lucrative as it was specialised. Even though Nippon was known for its progressive laws on human enhancement, gene manipulation was still a heavily regulated activity, subject to exorbitant taxation laws. While the viral modifiers and in-vitro design services that Jyousei Shounan offered were still beyond the financial reach of anyone outside the upper classes, they were a fraction of the cost required to get the same thing through legal channels.

Hanamura had a great fondness for collecting modified humans, as well as creating them. At least eighty-five percent of Jyousei Shounan runners were enhanced in some way – often genetically, but usually via bioaccessories or cybernetic implants. Kajimoto Takahisa had no visible add-ons that Keigo had spotted, but there were rumours that his bloodstream swarmed with nanobots, granting him unnatural healing, physiological control and information storage capabilities.

At the very least, the colour of his eyes was definitely not normal.

Those eyes were at present fixed upon Kirihara Akaya, who was sitting on a carven stool in the middle of the St. Rudolph main conference room. Kirihara's spine was relaxed into a hunch. His hands rested in between his parted legs, his fingers curled around the front edge of the seat. His neck twisted languidly as he examined his surroundings.

All in all, there were twelve runners in the room: Keigo, Jirou, the four remaining members of the Seiru committee, the three Jyousei Shounan representatives, and of course, the four Rikkai runners. Kirihara's gaze swept around dismissively before noticing Kajimoto's stare. He bared his teeth in a grin as green eyes met purple ones. Kajimoto did not look away.

"That Immunity really is a headache," said Tanaka Youhei. The Tanaka twins were leaning against the wood panelling next to Kajimoto, wearing their usual distant, snooty expressions. There was some wariness in their faces, however, as they looked at the Rikkai members.

"He's an in-vitro, right?" Tanaka Kouhei did not bother to lower his voice; across the room, Kaneda Ichirou turned in surprise. "That kind of power just isn't _natural_."

Nine runners were staring at Kirihara, now: all except Jirou, who was still chattering away to Marui Bunta, Marui himself, and Yagyuu Hiroshi, who was seated at the long table, tapping at his infodevice. Amidst the sudden lull that had occurred in the wake of Kouhei's statement, he said, without looking up: "Kirihara-kun. Do try to control yourself."

Kirihara scowled, and Keigo _felt_ the sudden dissipation of a pressure he had barely been conscious of.

Immunity. What a remarkable gift. It was the rarest of the psionic abilities, even in its weaker forms; up till now, Keigo had never met anyone completely impervious to telekinetic attack. (Judging from the fervour with which the InSec pyrokinetics had attempted to set Kirihara on fire this morning, neither had they.)

"I wonder to what extent that gift can be controlled," said Kajimoto Takahisa.

Keigo gave him a sharp look. "What do you mean?"

Kajimoto really did have remarkable poise. "Later. It's not something we should talk about now." He spoke just softly enough to be out of the Rikkai runners' hearing. "We should really get this meeting underway."

Keigo bristled. Kajimoto didn't have to _tell_ him what to do.

He walked over to the head of the table, sat down – on the tabletop, planting his feet firmly on the leather office chair next to him - and snapped his fingers with his right hand. "Everybody. We need to make some decisions."

They all looked at him, then, although from the expression on Akazawa's face, he would rather not have done so. Keigo scanned the room to make sure that he had everyone's attention, and then spoke: "As you should all know by now, we've managed to secure medical attention for those runners who need it, and Hyoutei's Fifth Squadron is working to reestablish order on the borders as we speak." Oshitari was out there right now, conducting triage and arranging further medical attention for those who needed it. There had been fewer casualties than Keigo had feared, and no one killed, although two members of Jirou's squad had sustained serious fractures, and there were at least ten runners altogether, from the three syndicates, who would probably require hospital admission.

Which made it all the more amazing that Keigo, Hiyoshi and the Rikkai members, who'd been in what was arguably the most difficult battle, were completely unscathed. Kirihara had a dramatic-looking bruise along his right arm, but that had come from flying too close to a building _after_ the last of the InSec operatives had been dispatched.

"Today's operation was entirely unprecedented in the history of Shin Tokyo, which means we need to discuss what this means for our respective syndicates, and what each of us plan to do from now on." He glanced at Kajimoto, and then on Akazawa, and finally Marui Bunta. Marui was staring back at Keigo while holding an array of chewing gum sticks out to Jirou. His eyes, too, were violet – somewhat lacking the loveliness and intensity of Kajimoto's, but possessing an alertness and intelligence that were compelling nevertheless. "For my part, I can say that Hyoutei has made no secret of its position regarding Inoue Mamoru's Code of Compliance. What happened today is not going to affect our decision in any way.

"I'm aware, however, that for other parties here, a change of philosophy may be signally to their advantage." He gazed at the St. Rudolph committee members until the implications of what he was saying dawned on all of them, even Yanagisawa. Akazawa looked as if he were one step away from drawing his pistol and carving a laser burn through Keigo's chest.

Keigo smirked.

Kaneda raised his hand. "Atobe-san, I'm not sure I follow you. Are you saying that it would be the best decision for us to join up with Seigaku? If that's what you think, why have you, and Jyousei Shounan – and even Rikkai – put so much effort into helping us maintain our territory here today?"

"Kaneda. You misunderstand me. I said that it might be advantageous to some of you, to join Seigaku in their quest to integrate with mainstream society. I hope, however, that you don't expect us to simply sit back and watch you hand over your assets to Inoue Memoru. The land that your syndicate controls is far too valuable to let the Patrol take it over without a fight."

Nomura and Kaneda looked at each other. Keigo kept his face aloof. There was no space, now, to regret the death of Mizuki – even if his tactical abilities would have been appreciated at a time like this.

Yanagisawa chewed on his lower lip, processing the situation. "Wait a minute! Do you mean you're going to come in and take over the place, if we do go over to Seigaku? You can't just do that!"

"Shinya," said Akazawa warningly. "Atobe, I need you to speak plainly. What do you plan to do, in either case?"

"If you decide to integrate? Jyousei Shounan and Hyoutei will make joint arrangements to take over your territory. This is what we have agreed." _The Seiru-Hyoutei border is filled with residential buildings. We can't afford to fight an all-out battle with InSec along that line._ "If, however, you decide to stay independent, we will back you up for as long as you require."

"In other words, you want our land to be the battlefield, not yours."

Keigo glanced at Nomura Takuya with an unprecedented rush of respect for the owlish-looking boy. "St. Rudolph has _already_ become the battlefield. The only question is who will be fighting on it, and for what."

They were temporarily distracted by the sound of chair legs scraping on parquet. Yagyuu Hiroshi stood, tucking his infodevice away into a pocket. "If you would excuse us, Atobe-kun, my fellow committee members would like to leave. I think we have nothing to contribute to these discussions."

"Erm. Ah." Marui disentangled himself from Jirou, who had looped an arm around the redheaded boy's shoulders, as if they were posing for a Best Friends Forever photograph. "I think at least one of us should stay here. For reportage-type purposes, if nothing else."

Yagyuu shrugged. "I will stay, then. But the rest of you should return to Kanagawa."

"Fair enough, all-knowing one. Come on, Akaya, Jackal, we can go!" They left the room as suddenly as they'd appeared, taking at least twenty percent of the tension in the room with them. Keigo had barely had time to appreciate the improved atmosphere, however, when Akazawa's infodevice began to ring, blaring a 21st century K-pop song across the conference room.

Keigo barely suppressed a wince at the music, but didn't miss the surprise that flashed across Yanagisawa's face. That ringtone belonged to someone important.

Akazawa talked into his infodevice for a few moments, and then frowned and looked up: "Atobe. We're going to call a a recess."

Keigo raised his brows. "Is this necessary? We don't have all day to waste, you know."

But Akazawa was already turning on his heels and heading towards the door. "Give us twenty minutes. It's Yuuta. He and his brother are on his way here."

This time, Keigo could not keep the surprise from his face. "You're letting a Seigaku member in here?" Never mind that keeping Fuji Syuusuke from doing exactly as he pleased was about as effective as - well, trying to stop Keigo from doing exactly as he pleased. "What are you going to do if Fuji Syuusuke makes you an offer?"

Akazawa stood in the doorway and scowled. "Twenty minutes, Atobe. Then we'll talk." The other St. Rudolph members trailed behind him as he made his exit, Kaneda stopping to give everyone an apologetic look befor hurrying after the others.

The only person left in the room who was not frowning was Yagyuu Hiroshi. Even Jirou looked somewhat upset, although that could have been due to the disappearance of Marui Bunta as much as anything else.

"It seems as if our hosts have given us no other choice," Keigo said. "We meet in twenty minutes. Don't be late."

#

"So what did you want to talk about?" They'd left the St. Rudolph building and walked at least two blocks away; Kajimoto seemed eager to ensure they had a modicum of privacy. "I believe you already discussed the trade agreements in great detail yesterday."

"We did," said Kajimoto. Alongside them, the road was covered in scorch marks and twisted metal, souvenirs from the battle this morning. "There is, however, one thing we omitted to discuss with Sakaki. Hanamura-sensei wanted me to bring the request to you directly."

"Oh?" They crossed the street and entered a deserted arcade. Kajimoto sat down on a wooden bench, outside a ramen shop that was closed for renovations, and, once Keigo had joined him, replied:

"We want to know the truth about Yukimura Seiichi."

He paused with some expectancy. Keigo sat back, folded his arms across his chest. "Would you care to elaborate on that? I'm afraid you haven't made the context of this request particularly clear."

Kajimoto didn't miss a beat in replying, looked straight back at Keigo's eyes: "Hanamura-sensei has been researching his possible background for years. Every possible lead so far has resulted in a dead end. We've been forced to conclude that this investigation cannot succeed unless we recruit outside help."

"Hmm. And is there some reason you decided to bring this to me? You should know very well that Hyoutei doesn't trade in information."

"Because you were the best person to come to, Atobe-san. Of all our associates, you are the one most independent of the Rikkai syndicate's influence. Besides – and you should know this already - we have the same problem when running searches on your name. There's no Atobe Keigo listed anywhere who matches your demographic data – not in the births registry, nor in any educational or immigration records. The same as for Yukimura Seiichi. We thought that you might have some insights into the mystery, that we sorely lack."

"And you were running searches on my background, because...?"

"It's Hanamura-sensei's policy to perform background checks on everyone we have dealings with. It's nothing personal."

Keigo checked the time on his wristcomm band; they had eleven minutes before the meeting resumed. He considered his options. A flat refusal, at this point, would be undiplomatic. _And likely to arouse suspicion._ "You do realise that chances are, Yukimura already knows about this little discussion of ours. And if he _doesn't_, it means that this search is probably doomed to failure anyway."

"That may be true. But it's not something we can calculate for. I choose to take the fact that this conversation is occuring, as a good sign in itself."

Yukimura Seiichi and Niou Masaharu. There couldn't possibly be more than five psionics in the whole of Nippon – no more than a dozen on the entire planet – with the kind of precognitive ability they had. It was powerful enough to ensure that any kind of preemptive strike against Rikkai would forever remain impossible; it was powerful enough to cement Rikkai's position as the country's strongest syndicate, despite their possessing a mere quarter of Hyoutei's manpower.

And the appearance of Kirihara Akaya today helped explain how Rikkai itself had remained strangely immune to precognitive attacks from other syndicates. Saeki Kojirou, perhaps, might have been strong enough to uncover Yukimura's identity via psionic methods. Chitose Senri, certainly. But the Immunity gift was well-known for its ability to not only nullify other psionic abilities but also send them completely haywire. Precognition was particularly vulnerable.

A skilled Immune could confer his or her Immunity on someone else as well as selectively block or disrupt another person's psionic abilities. Even an unskilled one, if sufficiently powerful, could grant considerable protection to the other people in their physical vicinity.

In any case, if it were possible to precog Yukimura's identity, someone would have done so already.

"Have you searched _all_ the possible databases? Thoroughly?"

"No, we haven't," Kajimoto admitted reluctantly. "There's several hundred invisible records in the International Births and Deaths Registry that we weren't able to hack into, since they're only accessible by the highest-level users. Even discovering that they existed was something of a feat in itself. And we have to allow for the possibility that Yukimura comes from off-planet."

"In which case you'll never solve the mystery of his identity."

"Hanamura-sensei is very keen to do so. She insists that an Empathic gift of that calibre could only have been developed in-vitro. If it were _not_ for that Empathic gift, I'd almost be inclined to believe the AI theory."

"For a living, breathing, human, he certainly doesn't leave many electronic footprints," agreed Keigo.

"Certainly not. But neither do you."

Keigo unfolded his arms. "It must be more rewarding than it seems, carrying out errands for Hanamura Aoi."

This time Kajimoto's face tensed visibly, but only for a split second. "Her research produces some fascinating insights," he said evenly. "When I said that we couldn't find an Atobe Keigo matching your demographic data, that wasn't exactly true. There was a record of an Atobe Keigo in a Level 4 Classified database. A native of Nippon, like you are, and the age was appropriate. But his blood group is recorded as O Rhesus negative, and more importantly, he died at the age of nine.

"It's strange, though. Beyond the record of his birth and death, we can't seem to get any information on _that_ Atobe Keigo either."

#

They walked back towards the St. Rudolph headquarters after making a tacit agreement to cooperate, neither of them particularly satisfied with the outcome of the conversation. _He definitely caught me off-guard. Two points to him, two to me. He didn't mean to let slip the information about the 'dead' Atobe Keigo. That happened because he was angry._

He was tempted to telepathically ransack Kajimoto's mind, but the violation of trust it entailed would utterly undermine everything Sakaki had worked to establish between Hyoutei and Jyousei Shounan. Even with the unexpected complication Kajimoto had just thrown in, it was still a useful alliance.

_More importantly. Kabaji did a database check in May. That record wasn't Level 4 access back then, it was Admin-only. What's the old man doing? Has his illness affected his mind?_

Oshitari was sitting on the steps outside the St. Rudolph townhouse when they got there. He saw them coming, and stood, managing a smile as he did so. _Good._ That meant that no one had been seriously injured.

"We've finished the last of the hospital transfers. Kaida's in stable condition, and Nakamura and Ito are probably going to need orthopaedic surgery, but they're otherwise okay." If anything, Oshitari looked worse than he had at six o'clock this morning, clothes crumpled, faint unshavenness and bags under eyes strikingly visible in the noon light. "I have to get back to headquarters to deal with the minor injuries, but I thought you'd like to know."

The double doors at the front of the building opened, and they looked up to see Yagyuu Hiroshi step outside.

Oshitari went very still.

"Atobe-kun, Kajimoto-kun. You're right on time." Yagyuu turned his head to look at Oshitari. "Oshitari-kun. What a pleasure to meet you."

Oshitari _blurred_, rather than moved. Whenever he fought seriously, he was quick as a snake.

The blade of his hand connected with the side of Yagyuu's neck just as Yagyuu's fist drove into Oshitari's stomach. The momentum drove Oshitari off-balance, forcing him to grab the the ornamental railing that lined the steps. Yagyuu reeled back a step. The infodevice clipped to his belt came loose and fell, clattering against the sidewalk.

Keigo watched as they both moved into casual fighting stances, focused on each other. There was a surprising intensity in Oshitari's eyes; Keigo hadn't thought anyone other than – say, Seigaku's Momoshiro – could evoke that kind of expression in Oshitari.

"One," he said. "Hiroshi moves faster than that. Two, you just hit me with your _left_ hand."

Yagyuu's posture relaxed. Then he reached up, and pulled off his glasses.

It was a well-established cosmetic service by now, customisable eye coloration; within Nippon it had been available to the general consumer for the last ten years. Still, the idea of pouring nanobots into your iris was an intimidating concept, and the procedure was rare except among fashion extremists. The sight of dark Asian eyes, instantly converting to silver, was both unusual and startling enough to be a novelty.

When the eye color change was immediately followed up, however, by similar, more prominent adjustments in hair and skin tone (light brown to white, tan to pale), the entire spectacle threatened to be freakish rather than fascinating.

"Yuushi. You're as clever as ever." Immaculately combed hair did not suit Niou Masaharu; as if aware of this, he began using his fingers to rumple it, creating a half-gelled half-tangled look that nevertheless looked less unnatural than the sight of Yagyuu Hiroshi's hairstyle dyed silver. Oshitari's fingers half-curled into a fist.

"Is that all you have to say? After five years?."

"Stop being a bleeding heart, Yuushi. It's not personal. It never was." Niou nodded at Keigo. "It's time for the meeting to start. We need to go in."

Keigo looked at the expression of utter - _something_ on Oshitari's face, and then at Niou's impassive eyes. _I can't do anything to help. Sorry, Oshitari._

But it was not Keigo, but Niou, who hesitated at the doors of the building, turning to stare at Oshitari for several moments before bowing his head, avoidantly, and slipping inside.

#

They found Fuji Syuusuke standing outside the main entrance to the conference room, quietly observing a wall-sized holographic adaptation of a John Constable painting. Fuji did not look up until Keigo's footsteps entered the anteroom, making a sharp echoing noise, but doubtless he had been aware of their presence far earlier than that.

He looked at them with his trademark impenetrable smile, developing a little frown of surprise as he noticed Kajimoto, before fixing his gaze on Niou – and now his eyes widened, and they were blue, fierce, and guarded.

Niou spoke first. "Fuji. What a pleasant surprise."

If Fuji was tense, then the three of them were – well, Keigo, at least, was not comfortable. Only a fool or a madman would allow himself to be comfortable around Fuji Syuusuke.

Fuji's smile sharpened, acknowledging the mockery of the Precognitive's statement. "The pleasure is all mine, Niou-kun."

Keigo decided to intervene before the two of them got caught up in a game of mutual baiting. "We're about to be late for the meeting."

Niou stepped towards the conference room entrance, but kept his focus on Fuji. Keigo clicked his tongue in irritation. _Oh come on, he's not _that _interesting. Now, if it were Tezuka..._

Fuji smiled sunnily, eyes disappearing into crinkles. "It seems that my presence isn't desired here any longer."

To an ordinary listener, the undercurrent of pain in his voice would have been imperceptible. To Keigo, it was as clear as words spoken aloud. He wondered what it would sound like to someone like Ootori or Yukimura.

"I've already seen it, you know. The end of Seigaku."

Fuji was already halfway across the anteroom when the words made him pause. Keigo looked from Rikkai runner to Seigaku runner, frowning deeply.

"Not to mention your brother's fate. You'd like to know, wouldn't you, Fuji – whether he gets out of this alive?"

Keigo heartily wished that Niou were in Kanagawa and that Fuji were somewhere very, very, far away. Off-planet, preferably.

He stepped forward, forcing Niou to step aside, and opened both doors, one with each hand.

On the other side of the doorway stood Fuji Yuuta.

Keigo's day was definitely going from bad to worse.

Yuuta took in the scene with a puzzled, and then gradually irritated, expression. "Aniki, you're still here?" His voice darkened to a growl. "I told you to to leave. You shouldn't have come here in the first place!"

Fuji made a noncommittal sound that could have been meant to be apologetic, but sounded to Keigo more like barely suppressed unhappiness. He turned, and Fuji widened his eyes again.

"If your brother's safety is truly your concern, then I suggest you do something about your allies. Do you have any idea how many people could have died today?"

Fuji's body language gave away nothing, but – whether because his emotional distress was causing him to leak, or because the adrenaline of today's events had sharpened Keigo's telepathic senses - a stray thought came wafting across:

_Exactly. If Seiru didn't exist..._

Keigo narrowed his eyes. He spread his fingers across his face, and _perceived_, quickly, before Fuji had a chance to strengthen his shields.

_...if Seiru didn't exist, then Yuuta would have no choice but to come home._

You wanted today to happen. Fuji Syuusuke, you bastard! Almost involuntarily, Keigo's hand went to the plasma gun holstered at his waist.

Fingers closed around Keigo's wrist, and suddenly Niou Masaharu was there, blocking his path. Keigo glared at Niou. "Let go of my arm, or I'll take you down with him."

"It's not the right time." Niou didn't move an inch. "Control your emotions. The last two days ought to have taught you not to act without thinking."

Control your emotions? It was the sort of thing that he'd told Oshitari, told Shishido so often, that he wanted to bite back a bitter laugh. _Do you know how many of my runners could have died today? Do you know how many people I had to kill today? I can't forgive Fuji that._

And then something fell into place in his mind and he understood, finally, what Niou was talking about.

If Mizuki hadn't died. If Akazawa hadn't killed Mizuki. Then Yuuta and Kisarazu Atsushi would never have left St. Rudolph, and the syndicate wouldn't have been left short of three of their strongest fighters at a critical juncture.

More importantly, Fuji Syuusuke would never have permitted InSec and the Patrol to launch an all-out attack on St. Rudolph if his brother had still been there. He would tried to stop it, and, because he was Fuji Syuusuke, succeeded.

Chains of causation, dominoes tumbling down. A butterfly flapping its wings in China. Keigo could see it all, now.

Sometime while Keigo had been having his epiphany, Fuji Yuuta had come forward. He was now talking to his brother, earnestly. "Aniki. This isn't anything you can help with. Please go."

Fuji Syuusuke reached up with one slender hand and traced the outline of his brother's jaw. Yuuta looked uncomfortable, but didn't pull away.

"Take care of yourself," Fuji said softly – and then he was gone, silent like a cat, like a shifting shadow.

Keigo and Fuji Yuuta were left looking at one another. Keigo managed to find his voice first. "So. You've thrown in your lot with Akazawa."

Yuuta started to look defensive, but then seemed to gather himself, and met Keigo's eyes squarely. "Yes. I have."

"I'm very pleased to hear that." And he was; there was genuine pleasure, in seeing Fuji Yuuta's sincerity, the determined set to his brow. _You should hold on to this one, Akazawa. He's worth the trouble._ "Come with us; we have decisions to make."

#

The meeting lasted until mid-afternoon. It was, ultimately, satisfactory in its outcome; the return of Fuji Yuuta seemed to have cemented Akazawa's determination to protect the St. Rudolph syndicate. It was decided that the reinforcements from Jyousei Shounan would not be needed to defend the territory.

"InSec took a significant loss today. I doubt they'll try again," Keigo said, watching Niou Masaharu's face as he did so – but the Precognitive neither confirmed nor denied Keigo's predictions, and even if he had, who would have trusted Niou not to lie, anyhow?

Kajimoto contributed little to the discussions, but Keigo had little doubt that Jyousei Shounan would remain compliant as long as he kept dangling the carrot of Yukimura's identity before Kajimoto's nose – and if necessary, the carrot of Keigo's own identity.

As to Rikkai's role in all this – well, Yukimura was impossible to predict, and would no doubt demand payback in due time. The fact that he'd gone to considerable trouble this morning to help them out suggested that he had a personal interest in keeping Keigo alive.

Still, it wouldn't hurt for Keigo to have some ammunition ready, when Yukimura made his move.

He considered the problem while he was flying back to Hyoutei headquarters, observing the streets below as he did so. Hiyoshi had effected the area clean-up with remarkable efficiency; from the elevation he was at, Keigo could barely see any traces of the morning's battle. Some broken glass on the sidewalks, maybe. Fewer pedestrians than one would expect in a shopping arcade on a Friday afternoon.

They were reliable, his squadron leaders. Hiyoshi. Kabaji. Even Shishido and Jirou, as unpredictable as they seemed at times.

But there was only one of them with the skills Keigo needed right now. And he was in many ways the least reliable of the lot.

He tapped a button on his wristcomm band. It rang for several seconds before there was a buzz, and a languid, tenor voice drifted from the microspeaker, barely audible over the rush of wind blowing past the flyer. "Keigo. What do you want, now?"

"Meet me for dinner tonight. Six o'clock, sharp." He cut the connection the moment the final word left his lips; the flyer hurtled forward, uninterrupted. There was no need to state the venue. _The usual place, Haginosuke._


	8. sidefic: Prognosis

Note: This sidefic is set about five years before the events of the main storyline. It is an optional read, and does not impact directly on the main storyline (if you'd rather just go straight on to the next chapter that's fine), but does provide some information about what happened between Oshitari, Niou, and Yagyuu in their early teens.

Every day after dinner Oshitari and Yagyuu would return to the room they shared to study. Cramped and windowless, it was still more comfortable than the overcrowded library. Yagyuu needed the desk to keep his head organised and would sit there with stylus and keyboard and built-in wall monitor, updating his exhaustive, very linear notes. Oshitari, who didn't mind either way, lay a half-metre away sprawled on his bunk, tapping on his widescreen infodevice. Every twenty minutes his attention waned and he would pick up one of the bookmarked paperbacks that lay scattered in the sheets around him. At time of the midyear clinical exams he was three hundred pages into _Clarissa_ and on the fourth chapter of _Little Women_. Printed books were expensive and hard to find, but Oshitari had few other uses for his weekly allowance.

They passed four hours of each evening like this. Yagyuu turned the lights off at eleven without fail, and it was at this point of his life that Oshitari picked up the habit of reading in the dark on infodevice. In the morning Yagyuu woke first, used the bathroom, had breakfast, and at seven-thirty made sure that Oshitari was out of bed, more than once by forcibly yanking him onto the floor. All that year this ritual which had been established in the first fortnight of their acquiantance would continue; in tandem with four lectures a day and another twenty-five hours of academic weekly contact time, it made for a highly rigid existence. Afterwards Oshitari would develop a simultaneous dislike of, and infatuation with, order and structure – it explained many things that would happen in the future, such as Atobe Keigo.

During the day they hardly saw each other, being in different years. Oshitari spent the average of forty-five spare minutes he had each day (excluding Sunday) in the vast cultivated park that stood in the middle of campus. There was a significant category of mood disorder associated with insufficient exposure to natural flora, and the college was reputation-conscious enough to have a passing concern for the health of its students. The park was rectangular and bordered with thin trees that shed their leaves once a year, like clockwork, and contained many lawns of extremely resilent, genetically modified grass. It was always filled with students. Within two months of coming to medical school one could tell on sight which ones were the aspiring doctors and which ones the future medics, the health technicians: student-doctors were older, more likely to flaunt a white coat, more emotionally rather than physically stressed, while the medics were teenagers more often than not, casual in speech, and conversationally crisp on account of needing to be somewhere else five minutes ago. Student-doctors were old money; student-medics were new intelligence, and what intelligence they had! Oshitari had never felt mentally slow before he came here. To be sure, he had the excuse of being four years younger than his average classmate, but youth could not protect him from failing an exam. Yagyuu was his age and facing finals and planning a minor thesis besides. He spent the evening of Oshitari's birthday (otherwise celebrated with special-delivery fish and chips, an hour-long VR shooting expedition, and a cup of illegal sake each) running database searches for a literature review.

"Mitochondrial changes in individuals with high psionic ability?" Oshitari lay on his bunk, slightly drunk and dubious. The topic sounded far too interesting for Yagyuu to be interested in it.

"Professor Whitaker of the Faculty of Genetics has a special interest in the subject. He offered to be my supervisor, and also guaranteed funding."

"Isn't it too complex for a six-month research project? The grads are always telling us not to be too ambitious for the minor." Secretly he hoped Yagyuu would go ahead, and fail; Yagyuu's habit of being good at everything was annoying even for Oshitari.

"I'll only be making a small contribution to their work: taking family histories, and doing psionic testing, and sample collection. Other research assistants will be doing the lab analyses. Besides, I've always found psionics interesting."

Yagyuu's tone suggested that if Oshitari were to argue the point any further he would find himself being woken up via a pail of iced water the next morning.

"My cousin is 4.3 telekinetic. He's a pain in the bum."

"All cousins are. It's probably nothing to do with the telekinesis."

Oshitari used the spread-open copy of Fanny Burney's _Evelina_ to cover his face. "Probably not. But the telekinesis makes him a bigger pain than usual." He lapsed into memory, remembered Kenya levitating over fences, crawling up walls Spiderman-style, spinning cutlery above their heads in a rapid gyre only to drop a knife on Oshitari's foot when the grown-ups discovered (and startled) them.

Yagyuu said, "I need to recruit psionics of Level 6 and above. Preferably telekinetics."

"Try a virtual hub. I read somewhere that psionic-types like the Tennis Hub."

"The Tennis Hub is famous for gangsters. Runners."

"So what? You're not looking for upper-class telekinetics."

Chilly silence, except for the sound of touch typing.

Oshitari felt lightheaded even though he was lying very still. That was the problem, he thought, you could never just make a suggestion to Hiroshi; you had to somehow convince him that he had thought of it all by himself, and all the better if you gave the impression that it was something you didn't want him to do, and really, Oshitari wasn't his _mother_, so what was with that attitude? If only Oshitari's mental faculties were working better.

Yagyuu shut down the monitor. He switched off the ceiling lights, so that the only brightness remaining in the room was a bluish haze of infodevice that lit the peripheries of Oshitari's vision, making partially visible the blurred darkened text of pages 117-118 of _Evelina_ that crammed into his gaze.

"Happy birthday," said Yagyuu.

#

Yagyuu's birthday was four days after Oshitari's, and fell on a Monday, which gave Oshitari the weekend to search for a present. He was unsure of what to buy. Neither of them needed anything and there was little space left in their room for new objects. Yagyuu liked sports and mystery novels but had not done much of either for months, thanks to the impending finals; in any case, he already had a gym membership and a subscription to the largest electronic library on the globe. The purpose of a birthday present was largely to express friendship and goodwill and to avoid offending Yagyuu by neglecting his birthday. Yagyuu himself took birthdays very seriously, and had given Oshitari a twenty-third century hardback edition of Jane Austen's complete works.

Their medical college stood at the heart of one of Shin Tokyo's busiest wards, and there were ample shopping districts located within a stone's throw of the entrance gates, teeming with all the eclecticism of this city. Holographic advertisements prowled the streets. Biomodified teenagers promenaded through open air malls. Oshitari began his shopping quest in a robot-operated combini above the local subway station, and shortly after, found himself in a massive, traditional department store, submerged in elevator music, displays of cologne and aftershave, and racks of leather shoes and silk ties.

"Get a watch," came a voice from behind him, as Oshitari was examining a glass spray-bottle of golden liquid with product information written on the back in six languages, none of which Oshitari spoke.

It was a boy Oshitari's age, wearing a thin wide-collared T-shirt over a celadon singlet, and cargo pants, with a black chain-belt wound loosely around his hips. His eyes were Asian, sharp and narrow, but striking due to their colour, a light shimmery silver.

He was smirking. As Oshitari stared at him, he took the bottle out of Oshitari's hands and hurled it to the ground.

Glass shards flew out around them, and the scent of verbena and menthol rose up like a cloud.

Shocked into speaking, Oshitari said, "What do you think you're _doing_?"

"Leaving." The boy was already on his way out of the aisle, but turned his head back to reply. "You coming? Or do you plan to stick around and pay for it?"

"The security cameras--"

"Won't see us. Come with me."

Spurred on by the knowledge that he could not afford to pay for the damages, Oshitari stepped over the carnage of cologne and followed the strange boy out of the department store, trying to mimic the other's insouciant, unconcerned air. His own heart was beating very hard, but none of the other shoppers seemed to notice anything amiss, and he was sensible enough to make the best of the situation.

Outside they blended in easily with the other pedestrians, heading to the opposite sidewalk and then towards a major intersection, where the crowd was thickest. They moved steadily, the strange boy setting the pace.

"Who are you?" Oshitari asked, deciding that the best initial approach was to get as much information as possible.

"Niou Masaharu. You're Oshitari Yuushi."

A reply that posed yet another question. "How do you know my name?"

"It's a talent of mine." Niou grinned at him. It was a friendly grin, but suggested that Niou did not really care whether Oshitari smiled back or not. "Are you going to get that watch?"

"Why do you care?"

"I can't afford a birthday present. So when you buy one, tell Yagyuu that it's from both of us."

"Does Hiroshi know you?"

"He will."

Exasperated, Oshitari asked, "Do you ever make sense to anyone?", before they got separated in a sea of pedestrians at the traffic lights. Oshitari kept track of Niou by the boy's platinum blond hair, which bobbed its way across the junction in a diagonal line.

When they were reunited at the corner, Niou answered: "Only to logical people. That rules you out."

"Why did you break that cologne bottle?"

"Because I could."

"Obviously."

"I know where you can get cheap prices on watches," said Niou, thus proving himself the sort of person who stuck to a goal once he had it in mind.

"Why would Hiroshi need a watch?"

"He doesn't. But he'll like it."

"And you know this, because--" They were cutting across a alley, so narrow that the protruding steps at the back of shops nearly spanned its entire width. At least three graffiti artists had been at work here: one in biopaint that had reproduced into new patterns and reached even to the roof of buildings, one with traditional spray cans, and one in a black substance that emitted mathematical sequences of electromagnetic radiation. Oshitari felt bursts of infrared heat on his skin as they walked past.

"I told you already. It's a talent. Here we are." They had arrived at an outdoor shopping arcade. Niou led Oshitari to the centre of it, into a transparent plastic bubble elevator, and they floated downwards.

On the basement level, at the end of a corridor tiled like a checkerboard in sienna and ochre, stood a little store crammed full of accessories, which they entered. There was barely enough room for them to stand in between the shelves. Oshitari picked up a burgundy wallet, careful not to disturb the precarious balance of the other wallets that piled around it, and checked the price tag.

"Three thousand shin yen? Are these fake?" He sniffed the leather. "It's cheap even for fake leather."

"I've found the watch." Niou held up the object of his search. It was gold-plated, with a classic clock face; Oshitari could hear the faint tick of the second hand. "Ten thousand shin yen, with a ten-year warranty. Not bad, right? Comes with a nice box, too. All you have to do is wrap it in some tissue paper."

"It's still an expensive gift."

"All the better. Yagyuu hates cheap."

How _did_ Yagyuu know a strange kid like this? "Why should I buy it?"

"Why shouldn't you buy it?" Niou folded his arms across his chest, and his gaze went distant, indicating that he had said all that he cared to about this subject.

"Nobody wears this kind of watch anymore."

"Yagyuu's not most people."

That was true. "How do I know it's any good? I can't tell a high-quality wristwatch from a poor one."

"I can. It's a good watch."

"And I should believe your words, because-- Something caught Oshitari then, at the edges of his mind, and he frowned. "No, you're not lying."

As he spoke this he saw a feral, delighted expression cover Niou's face.

"Why do you think that?" Niou asked.

Oshitari was prevented from answering by a sudden, fleeting blurring of his vision. Pain flashed through his skull. "Give it to me," he said.

Niou handed him the watch and its case, and Oshitari walked over to the automated sales machine standing in one corner. After he'd paid, Niou gave him a small wave with his fingers. "I'll see you tomorrow. Good luck with the headache."

Then he was gone, exiting through the shop's tinted sliding glass doors. Oshitari paused to tuck the watch into its glossy black case and slip the thing into his wallet. He was barely a second behind Niou, but when he emerged into the chessboard corridor, it was completely empty.

The headache that had cursorily come and gone minutes ago, reappeared again as he took the elevator back up, and by the time he arrived on campus it had thoroughly made its home with him, necessitating a Sunday afternoon in his room spent with acetaminophen, sips of water, and a sleeping mask.

In years to come when Oshitari thought of Niou he would think secondly of pain, but firstly of question after question all hanging in midair, never leading to any sort of real answer.

#

He woke up at six the next morning, flushed and shivering. He was tachycardic. He was agitated. He had been having nightmares.

He crawled out of bed, checking the upper bunk to see if Yagyuu was still asleep (he was), and switched on the wall monitor. It came to life displaying several windows still open, demonstrating that last night Yagyuu had been a) reviewing management guidelines for trauma life support; b) writing an e-mail to his physician father, c) searching for information about psionics on every search engine Oshitari could think of.

Eschewing the stylus and using bare hands to control the touchpad, he fingered his way through the websites. Yagyuu preferred his monitor in 2D mode, and had his colour schemes set to neutral -- but all over the planet, server owners were upgrading from traditional circuitry to neural networks, and web standards were a joke globally. The holographic main portal for _Nousaemin_, the international community for young psionics, appeared as a maimed image on the flatscreen display, surrounded by placeholder icons for multimedia of all kinds.

He recalled Kenya showing him the website a couple of summers ago, in all its varicoloured, epilepsy-tempting, three-dimensional glory. Kenya had had headaches. Fevers, too. Pyrexia, chills, generalised aches and malaise: all symptoms of non-specific viral infections, systemic inflammatory illnesses – and burgeoning psionic powers.

He wasn't sure where Kenya's telekinesis came from. Neither of their fathers had ever demonstrated so much as one microjoule of psychic power. Although, if Yagyuu was correct about the mitochondria hypothesis – mitochondrial DNA was all passed down maternally. Which meant that Kenya's genetic source of psionic talent was completely separate from his own.

Oshitari could not have explained how he knew that he was psionic. The fact came to him as he was half-staring at (through, rather) the computer screen – not as epiphany, but in the way the date of one's birthday or the memory of a smell might drift into mind. Soon after he began idly to construct the logical argument leading to his knowledge, but the knowledge came first, the deduction later. He had psionic powers, like his cousin Kenya. He was just coming into them.

In future it would be usual for his precognitive gifts to manifest themselves thus. A knowing, a simple entry of information, flowing in easily like electricity through a wire. His visions were terrible but rare. His distress was purely psychological.

He asked a healthcare search engine to look for items related to "suppression psionic activity pharmacological treatment."; then realised, by the rustle of cloth coming from behind, that Yagyuu was waking up. Feeling awkward, Oshitari aborted the search and greeted Yagyuu happy birthday. Yagyuu's response was barely mumbled. He was not much of a morning person by nature; it was only the force of habit and discipline that kept him waking up at this time.

Oshitari passed the day in a dreamy medicated haze of ill-defined pain, into which details of DNA-modifying drugs, vasculature and innervation of the lower limb, pre-, intra- and post-hepatic causes of jaundice, barely penetrated. Not for the first time he wondered why he was here, instead of in high school; instead of doing quantum chemistry at university as his father had suggested. Physiology was fascinating, pharmacology delightful; the prospect of real patients tantalised. But he would not be allowed professional licensing until he was sixteen, which was the age at which he could go to medical school to do proper doctor's training.

His parents had been ambivalent about whether to send him to Shin Tokyo to study. His uncle, on the other hand, had been forcefully against it, and told his father as much on at least one occasion that Oshitari had overheard: "You know as well as I do that medics are a thing of the past. When there weren't enough actual doctors on this planet it was different; medics were essential for providing healthcare in rural and remote areas. But that hasn't been true since we were children. The only place to get work is in the space colonies."

"He can be a doctor later if he wants to be. With a medic's degree, admission to medical school will be automatic. Or he can go to university afterwards. It's only a two-year course."

"Two years is a long time for a child to be away from his parents."

"If he's keen, I'll let him do it. He's young enough to do whatever he wants to."

Yagyuu had been even younger. Ten years old when he applied, eleven when he enrolled. The average age of graduation was eighteen. Despite the decline in job opportunities, the course was still popular – medics still commanded strong respect here, as they did on any recently colonised planet.

"...plus if possible, I'd like to avoid Yuushi working for Shitenhouji."

His uncle's reply had been quite cold: "It's a syndicate with a long tradition, and a deep history with our family."

"It's a syndicate, and illegal."

"In case you haven't noticed, _brother_, everything in this country is illegal! You won't find a city or burb in Nippon that doesn't depend on runner activity. And the Silver Emperor, may he stop discovering nanotech miracles of regeneration and croak soon, is worse than most of the so-called syndicates. Yuushi and Kenya would be safer in Shitenhouji than in most other places."

The week after Oshitari started medic training, Kenya had messaged to say that he had run away from home to become a Shitenhouji runner. Oshitari's reaction was mild alarm tempered by a grim satisfaction. Their fathers' plans, in the end, mattered little in the face of what they themselves wanted.

Oshitari returned to his room after classes to find Yagyuu outside the door, talking to Niou Masaharu.

Yagyuu nodded in greeting. "Yuushi."

"Hiroshi," Oshitari replied coolly. "Niou."

"Oshitari. That makes full circle. Can we leave now? Yagyuu doesn't like to stay up late."

The slightest movement of Yagyuu's eyebrow told Oshitari that this was not information that Yagyuu had given to Niou.

""Niou's a precognitive," he explained to Yagyuu. "That's where he's getting all this information." And he knew that it was true, although he had no sense of where or how he was acquiring this knowledge.

"I never told you that," Niou said, mimicking Yagyuu's subtle brow curve.

"I'm intelligent. That's why I'm studying here."

"So I see. Have you got Yagyuu's present?" Without pausing Niou turned his attention back to Yagyuu. "We went shopping together for your birthday present yesterday."

"Is that so?"

"It's a watch. It tells you exactly what time it is, right now."

"That's the usual purpose of a watch," Yagyuu said dryly. To Oshitari's surprise he did not seem put off by the appearance and mannerisms of Niou. To the contrary, he looked interested.

"There are variations," Oshitari added, caught up in the subject despite himself. "Some watches tell you what the time is in several cities, all at once. Kapitalstadt and Santa Teresa and Fengzhou. New York. Paris."

"Some watches," said Niou, "don't run. They just tell you the same time, all the time."

"Like Miss Havisham's clocks?"

Yagyuu cleared his throat. He was always impatient with Oshitari's literary allusions. "I want to be back by nine," he told Niou.

"Yeah, yeah. Don't repeat yourself. Wouldn't you like your present first?"

"Not really. Yuushi can give it to me afterwards. Are you coming with us for dinner, Yuushi?"

"Of course," Oshitari said, even though it currently felt like he was having a headache in his neck, hips, and sternum, an experience that had doubled in intensity the moment he came within five feet of Niou.

"Let me get changed then, and we'll go." With that, Yagyuu disappeared into the room, leaving the remaining two in the passageway.

At first they were silent. Then Oshitari spoke: "I did some research in the library today. Did you know that a high-level psionic can activate the latent talents of another psionic by using their psychic abilities on that person?"

"Yes. I remember you telling me. A long time ago." Niou's lip curled. "But you're wearing the wrong clothes. I made sure I was wearing the right clothes, too, when I met you, and today. I even made sure to smash the bottle yesterday, and instead you show up in high-tops and jeans. All the calculations are off. I'll have new bad dreams tonight."

"Do you have bad dreams when you're awake?" It was not the question Oshitari had meant to ask; it was simply the first thing that had come out of his mouth, and he felt like if he decelerated the conversation, gave himself time to think, he would go mad from the effort and result.

"Not unless I let them happen. It's the sort of thing," Niou draped himself against the wall in a lazy pose that belied his focused, focused eyes, "that you get good at after a while."

"Is that why you came here? Because you saw yourself coming here?"

"I came here for Yagyuu's project."

That, Oshitari thought, was not really answering the question.

"You should get help. There are clinics for people with problems like this -- special academies--"

"Nobody can help." Some quick dead emotion flickered across Niou's face. "Not you. Not me. Not people like us."

Oshitari groped for words. There was a tutorial he had attended last month -- on drug counselling, emotional abuse victims, full of helpful suggestions. There was something he could say or do.

"We can try."

"You will," Niou said, before turning towards the door to Oshitari's room. It eased open to reveal Yagyuu, dressed in casual smart, bespectacled.

#

Yagyuu never wore glasses on campus and always wore them everywhere else. It was one of those Yagyuu quirks, the sort of peculiarity he always had a perfectly logical-sounding explanation ready for – an explanation that would make no sense once Oshitari stopped to think carefully about it. Everything about Yagyuu was a bit like that. A _non sequitur_ disguised as _de facto_.

Niou liked Yagyuu's glasses and said as much, at the Korean barbecue place where they celebrated Yagyuu's birthday. The way he said it, it was as if he was saying that he liked Yagyuu. Yagyuu's response was intriguing. He readjusted his spectacles that Niou had pulled crooked, took up his metal chopsticks to place more beef strips on the grill, and said the usual polite and disdainful things -- but there was no real venom in it, there was bemusement, there was fascination. It offended Oshitari. Seven months of living together, and he'd never seen this side of Yagyuu.

Three weeks later Niou bought Oshitari his first pair of glasses.

"Thanks. Though I don't need them." Oshitari folded them into their cloth-case and put them in the front pocket of his satchel, which was hanging from a wondrously horizontal branch of an oak tree at the centre of the quadrilateral college park.

"I've seen you wearing them. They look good on you."

"Because you knew I was going to wear glasses, you bought me glasses? That's what they call a philosophical paradox," Oshitari said, although the fact was he didn't know the first thing about philosophy and cared only vaguely, in the sense of regretting that he couldn't sound reliably intellectually impressive at times like this.

Niou shook his head. "No, it's not a paradox." Niou was very, very good and logical about his definitions. There was a kind of academic purity about his brain; something that Yagyuu lacked. Moral and emotional purity weren't the same thing as intellectual purity.

Niou sometimes talked like a little kid, sometimes like a older teenager, sometimes like Oshitari's father. More often he talked like Yagyuu, mannerisms and all. Oftenest he was silent, a state he lapsed into more and more often as their acquaintance continued. By November Yagyuu had finished his literature review and begun the practical aspects of research, and Niou was accompanying him in the laboratories every week. When he wasn't himself the subject under study, he was helping Yagyuu find other volunteers. According to Yagyuu he was a very patient study subject.

Yagyuu came back one evening in an agitated silence that made the atmosphere of their room terrible. Oshitari put up with it until nine o'clock, jamming headphones into his ears and losing himself in reading bodice-rippers, until he decided Yagyuu's fingers on the keyboard were too arrhythmic and loud; also when Oshitari paused to check he noticed that Yagyuu seemed to be reading the same content on the monitor over and over again, since the screen never changed.

"What happened with Niou?" he asked.

For the next, literal minute he thought that Yagyuu was not going to reply.

Then: "He broke the scale," Yagyuu said. "The test for precognitives. The assessment's done by using a program to output true random numbers, and asking the psionic to predict the number. We did ten thousand numbers today. He only got three wrong."

It was unsurprising news, but Oshitari was still caught up in the shock and drama of it. "Which makes him a level--"

"This style of assessment is only valid up to level 8.999. Any rating higher than that has to be assigned by a psionics expert. I...had to lie on the test." Yagyuu had stopped typing and now rested his hands on the table; except for speech, every part of him was unmoving. "I put him down as a 6.8. If I recorded him as a 7 Professor Whitaker would want to intervene personally. They put people like Niou in institutions."

"They put people like Niou in the _palace_. To work for the Emperor." Not even that, Oshitari thought; they shipped people like Niou back to Old Earth, cloned them, spliced their DNA, turned them into celebrities, built mini-industries around them. Here in Nippon, where espionage was more lucrative than fame, it was a different story.

Oshitari's list of psionic suppressant drugs was getting longer and longer and he showed it to Niou every time they crossed paths.

"I went to see a doctor last week," he told Niou in December. "He gave me a long-term prescription."

"One of your teachers?"

"Of course not. That's unethical. He's a family friend. He's a good guy. I could make an appointment at his clinic for you. If you wanted."

"Have you taken the tablets yet?"

"Not yet. I'm still deciding."

"You'll take them, but not for long. And if your right eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. If seeing meant that you only saw evil things, would that mean you'd want to be blind?"

"You could _try_ for a while. It's not like gouging your eyeballs out or anything."

"No," said Niou, expressionless. "There are people I want to see."

"Who?" And again the knowledge was simply there for Oshitari to access, to bring out. "Yagyuu."

"Yagyuu. Someone else. Not you."

His fingers curled and clenched before he could control them. "A real privilege, of course. A starring role in your nightmares."

But he was jealous and left out, just as Niou had intended. He wanted to tell Niou that he was he was a freak. He wanted to punch something, or else to walk away from this conversation. He thought of looking down at his feet and avoiding eye contact. And he knew that right now Niou could see everything Oshitari _might_ do in the next minute, in a waking collection of superimposed possibilities.

So he chose the future that Niou would experience for real, and said: "Yagyuu doesn't have clinical practice this afternoon. Wanan go out for dinner?'"

"....Sure." And Niou smiled after he was done with looking surprised, and something was – not averted, but temporarily stayed.

#

And still he was – not drifting away, but being locked out. Gradually the gates of Niou and Yagyuu's friendship swung close, and each day the remaining gap in-between grew narrower. By Christmas Oshitari could just barely slip in.

"All my life, I've seen you in my dreams," Niou informed Yagyuu, in the middle of a street of falling snow. They were eating meat skewers. All around them the city flashed red and green. Oshitari could only think that it looked and sounded like a very _very_ bad romance novel. "You and the blue-eyed boy. He sees us. We'll go to him. It's the natural outcome."

Yagyuu's gaze was as Oshitari had never seen it or thought possible: hot, furious, wanting. "Tell me."

It was no longer Oshitari's world. It was not his future. He could, however, taste and and precognise glimpses of it – and it was frightening and bloody.

He went back to his doctor and asked for his prescription dosage to be doubled. His headaches fluctuated. They had gone away when he began the suppressant drugs, but now they struck unpredictably and with a vengeance. Oshitari sat the supplementary exams feverish and confused, trying to ignore the facts that he should not know, the details that materialised suddenly in his mind when he glanced at a blank line; despite his explicit certainty that he did _not_ know the answers. He passed with flying colors and felt guilt.

The morning of the Lunar New Year (mid-February this year), Oshitari stared at the plastic stylus lying askew on Yagyuu's desk and told it to float.

It did.

"You saw this happening," he accused Niou, the next time they met. "You knew."

"I thought you preferred not to know."

"I did, I do. Nothing has made sense since you came."

"You're wrong. Everything has always been perfectly logical. Take more of your drugs if it bother you so much."

"I can't. I'm at the maximum dose." Already he was on the strongest drug available on the general market; anything stronger and it would render Oshitari clumsy-gaited, make him thow up every meal he ingested.

"You're like me, so of course nothing would work. You'll never be a doctor, you know. You should stop fooling yourself."

"I'll be a doctor if I want to."

"Then you'll never want to," Niou said, mockingly agreeable.

"Just go away, please."

Niou did, and when he came back to visit, he only came to see Yagyuu. By then Oshitari was too preoccupied with faces and voices, phantasmagoria, to care. Futures loomed in his mind in wakingand sleeping visions, and they were not images of anybody or anyplace he knew. Solid objects acquired malleability, stationary items shifted without his purposing. Precognition, telepathy, telekinesis all melded into a single experience. It was all the same. Oshitari feared all of it. Oshitari could no longer keep any of them at bay.

He stopped seeing his doctor. There was no way to be honest about what he was going through, and he did not want to be removed from medical college.

His prescription lapsed, and finally, reluctantly, one lunch break when Yagyuu was not in their room, he went to the desk and clicked his way to the _Nousaeimin_ website, pulled up a single plain text file. Its heading covered the top of the screen in stark neat black: "Controlling your psionic abilities: a personal training guide."

He read it all. He followed the links and read more pages of advice. Afterwards, he shut the computer down and began to practice.

#

March brought final exams, end-of-year ceremonies, and for Yagyuu, graduation with honours.

"You deserve it," Oshitari told him. "You worked hard."

They went up in a flyer that night, per Yagyuu's wish. Neither of them was licensed or experienced at piloting one, and the jerky accelerations and near-collisions were exhilarating. The air was polluted and crisp with cold, the moon seen only as an undefined brightness from beyond cloud and smoky atmosphere.

Gravity was gravity, and continued to be gravity, as Yagyuu demonstrated at least five times within the course of an hour's flight.

"We're could die," Oshitari said, after Yagyuu managed to recover the vehicle from nosediving into a skyscraper. "Scratch that, we _are_ going to die. Let's park right now. I have too many plans for my life -- oh, shit." They missed a head-on collision by inches, and the driver whizzed passed them, screaming expletives and comparing their brains to various scatological items.

Yagyuu, Oshitari opined, seemed to be enjoying this entirely too much.

"Don't worry. Niou told me we would survive." The flyer wobbled again, and Oshitari's visceral organs attempted to flee to some parallel dimension where they would be safe.

"What a shame. Takes all the suspense out of it. Where _is_ Niou tonight?" Privately Oshitari was glad of Niou's absence. It allowed him the illusion of things being as they had been before, just the two of them, studying to be medics. When he thought he had understood Yagyuu perfectly.

He could feel Yagyuu's thoughts even now, hovering just out of reach, held purposefully at bay. If Oshitari wanted he could touch them, know what the other boy was thinking. But his recoil at the idea was instant and automatic.

"Don't know. He said that he shouldn't come with us."

A ringtone emerged from Yagyuu's infodevice.

"It'll go to message mode," Yagyuu said. "I can get it later."

"You don't get messages often. It might be important."

"Not important enough." Yagyuu flicked a button. The flyer twisted up savagely, and looped around a light-bedecked tower, turning sideways to do so. Oshitari fell towards the left door of the vehicle, felt his neck loll downwards suddenly, dug his fingernails into the double seatbelt that covered his body.

"Definitely enjoying this too much," he muttered, softly enough that his voice was lost in the sound of wind.

After they returned the flyer to the rental garage Oshitari had to resist the urge to hug the ground. He closed his eyes, revelling in stability, the solid stationary ground. Beside him, Yagyuu checked his infodevice.

"That was fun. Might have been improved with anti-nausea drugs," said Oshitari. He felt movement beside him, and opened his eyes to see Yagyuu running out of the garage, silver infodevice still clasped in one hand.

Oshitari chased him outside and then along the nighttime streets, towards campus, dodging traffic and people. Yagyuu was unnaturally fit. By the time they reached the front gates -- when Yagyuu tugged his glasses out of a shirt pocket and impatiently shoved them on, before dashing inside -- Oshitari's calves were burning with anaerobic buildup.

He gasped for oxygen, and then resumed the sprint. He followed Yagyuu's quick smooth-moving figure across school grounds, finally catching up at the Faculty of Genetics building. Yagyuu had come to a stop in front of the closed main doors, which he was staring at with fists balled at his sides.

"What is it?" Oshitari asked quietly.

Yagyuu looked almost surprised to see Oshitari there. "Professor Whitaker," he answered shortly, without turning his gaze from the metal doors. "He found out about Niou. I deleted original Niou's test results, but I couldn't wipe all the raw data; it automatically gets backed up to a secure university server.

"He figured out what I did. He said he'd forgive me for falsifying research data and not alter my final grade. How ridiculous is that? But he wants Niou for research. Research subjects like him are too invaluable to pass up."

"That's silly. Niou won't cooperate."

"He would. If he thought I'd fail medic college if he didn't. I'm leaving with him after graduation, you know. To find the boy he's always going on about."

"The blue-eyed boy? You're crazier than I ever thought you were," Oshitari said. It was a shame, really. He would have liked this Yagyuu better. If they'd ever had a chance to talk.

"Sometimes I think I've been mad all along. I hate this place, you know."

When placed against Yagyuu's perfect attendance record, his perfect perfect study habits and fearsome clinical skills, the statement somehow made perfect sense.

"You're different," Yagyuu added. "You'd be a good doctor. Internal medicine, or paediatrics."

"You're wrong," Oshitari said. "I'll never be a doctor." He thought: so this is what being Niou was like. The knowing, the certainty. "Please don't do it."

"Do what?"

"The thing you're thinking of right now."

"Get out of my mind." Yagyuu's face darkened. "_Fuck_ you. I have to graduate."

"Hypocrite." Oshitari couldn't see the way out. Knowledge poured in from every future that could happen; in all of them a man lay dead, and Yagyuu walked away.

"Don't try to stop me."

He had to stop it. He had to try and fail. He struck out with his mind, aiming wildly, untrained, reaching for Yagyuu, trying to be fast enough -- And Yagyuu had seized him by the arms, was hauling him around, and Oshitari was struggling with body and mind but couldn't get free, couldn't get free.

Yagyuu slammed the base of Oshitari's skull against a pillar.

#

Yagyuu graduated _in absentia_. After spending a week in hospital with a concussion, Oshitari went back to Neo-Kansai for the holidays. Neither of them attended Profesor Whitaker's funeral.

A year later, Oshitari dreamed of meeting Atobe Keigo.


	9. Chapter 7

"You want to break into InSec."

For a moment it seemed as though Taki Haginosuke would break into laughter. Then his face smoothed over, he took another bite of cannelloni, and he chewed ponderously, gaze fixed on his plate. Keigo regarded him with some impatience.

"Can you do it, or can't you?"

Haginosuke swallowed his food. It was a graceful, controlled motion; Keigo barely saw his throat move. "Do I have much of a choice?"

"I don't like people promising things they can't deliver." They looked at each other. Haginosuke's features still carried a hint of bitter mirth – well, he _had_ always been devoted to that pose of ironic amusement. It was probably why he'd failed to remain partners with Ootori Choutarou. Ootori hated insincerity.

"Then I won't promise," Haginosuke said. "Are you going to eat? That roasted lamb is meant to be exquisite."

The meal in question was sitting in front of Keigo, basically untouched. He stared at it, a ruddy beautifully carved thing offset by potato medallions, zucchini and glazed baby carrots, picked up his fork, felt suddenly tired, and put down his fork again. He was in fact hungry, but in that awkward state of hunger where the thought of eating made him nauseous.

"The universe would keep running even if you collapsed of hypoglycaemia," said Haginosuke, "but it wouldn't hurt for you to stay healthy."

He then added: "It's been a horrendous week, hasn't it?"

Keeping firmly in check the tension within him that threatened to break surface, Keigo spoke, harsher than he'd intended, "Just tell me what you're capable of."

"Well, I really don't know. I'd need at least a day to gather intelligence, check out their security systems. Probably more like two days. Are you in much of a hurry?"

"Do it as quickly as possible. Kabaji can take over your regular duties while you work on it. But don't cut corners."

Haginosuke took on a miffed expression. "I never cut corners."

"And don't take drugs."

"I don't – I'm _not_ taking drugs at the moment." Haginosuke spoke with a wry, strained smile. Keigo experienced a sudden, heady, dangerous dose of empathy. Most of the time Haginosuke's brittle poise, his effeminate sarcasm, provoked in Keigo either annoyance, or more often, a kind of condescending tenderness. Today Keigo's own state was too close to Haginosuke's default one.

He had miscalculated in arranging to meet Haginosuke for dinner. Debriefing over wine and food was an old tradition of theirs, upheld since Keigo's days as a squadron leader; in Keigo's more honest moods, he admitted to himself that he kept up the practice because there was something fundamentally and aesthetically apt about spending money on Haginosuke.

Haginosuke was temperamental, mercurial, high-maintenance, and fragile, which was almost everything Keigo hated in his subordinates. Somehow it didn't matter.

Haginosuke had paused eating and now gazed at Keigo speculatively. "You look an absolute wreck, did you know that?"

"I don't recall asking your opinion."

"Your clothes smell of smoke. You have _bags_ under your eyes. And broken veins on your cheeks." Taki sipped his Chardonnay thoughtfully. "Okay, I was lying about that last bit. Would you like a pocket mirror?"

Keigo, who'd turned to examine his shadowy reflection in the glass wall that bounded their end of the restaurant, now stopped to glare. "You could attempt--" He stopped. What was he asking for? For Haginosuke to desist? For comfort, understanding?

Alarm flickered in Haginosuke's good eye. "Two days. I should have all the information I need in two days."

Keigo didn't like to think about how vulnerable he seemed right now. If _Haginosuke_ was making an effort to restrain himself--

"Atobe."

He picked up his knife and fork and began cutting up strips of lamb, mechanically focusing on the action. A key purpose of food: it provided something to do during difficult conversations.

"We need you. To keep Hiyoshi humble and Jirou awake, if nothing else. Atobe, talk to me. Actually, never mind. Just eat. Then get drunk. Something."

"As if I'd get drunk with you around." The moment the statement slipped out Keigo knew he'd mishandled something: the tone, the wording, maybe the entire context. It hung in the air a tad too long, the two of them carefully avoiding eye contact. Then Haginosuke's eyes crinkled with humour.

"I suppose I'd have have to call Kabaji and ask him to carry you home. I can't do it, that's for sure."

Keigo fingered his wine glass, unsure how to deal with this unexpected, sudden – grace, this kindness, on Haginosuke's part. It was something more typical of Shishido or Oshitari.

"Two days. That's all you get," he said finally, gruffly. "Would you like some dessert?"

"Only if it's expensive. I suppose everything on the menu qualifies."

"It's coming out of your salary."

"Of course." Haginosuke waved a waiter over. "Would you like something sweet, or nauseatingly sweet?"

"As long as it's unhealthy."

Haginosuke smiled in that rare, blindingly charming manner of his. "I'll try my best."

#

He came awake gradually and groggily, unsure of his surroundings. The bed was firm but soft. Silk sheets. Semi-darkness.

His sleep had been dreamless. As he lay there, silently allowing alertness to descend, the events of the past forty-eight hours cycled through his mind in slow motion: Kotoha dead. Mizuki dead. Yukimura bargaining for – something. SeiRu territory bloodied and chaotic, saturated with gunfire. Hanamura Aoi, suspecting something. Too many people suspecting something. Himself, dead in ten days' time. Eating lychees and gelati with Haginosuke.

Blankness. There were gaps in his memory. There was an ephemeral jolt of alarm. He willed it to fade, then forced himself to a sitting position.

He was in his own bedroom, still wearing the suede jeans and dress shirt he'd worn to dinner last night. Several buttons were undone, and his belt had been loosened but not removed. The blinds were drawn, but around their edges a warm-colored light was seeping in.

Keigo looked for the time. He found it on his wristcomm, which had been removed from his person and was lying in its usual spot on the bedside table. 1300 hours, in illumined green letters.

It was one o'clock.

Keigo's final memory of last night was of the sharp, tangy coldness of dragonfruit gelati. Haginosuke had been saying something he couldn't quite remember, something not particularly witty or caustic which had nonetheless managed to sound both at the time. Keigo had felt blurry, as if someone had misted up his consciousness with a vapouriser spray.

Haginosuke had _drugged_ his ice cream.

For a minute he was so impressed that the Sixth Squadron leader had managed this feat that he forgot to be furious. Then he remembered, and abruptly jabbed a button on his wristcomm.

There was a beep, and then Haginosuke's voice spoke, sounding light and breathy, as it always did on recording: "_You've reached Taki Haginosuke's number. I'm sorry I can't take your call right now – I'm busy working on a top secret project for our fearless leader. If you happen to be our fearless leader, I'm afraid I can't take your call at all. Love and kisses, Taki Haginosuke."_

A second beep marked the end of the voice message, and Keigo hesitated only slightly before disconnecting. He had more important things to do than wring Haginosuke's neck. Really. Maybe.

Damn it, he could take care of his own health!

Keenly aware of the lost hours of the morning, he brushed his teeth, showered, and changed quickly, then called Oshitari next.

"Is everyone okay?"

"They'll all pull through. Souta won't be using that arm for a few months, but he's the worst case by far. I was just about to contact you, actually. Are you in your study?"

"I will be, in five minutes. See you there?"

"Sure. I can be there in ten."

"I'll give you twenty," said Keigo dryly. Oshitari was not known for his impressive time management.

In the end Oshitari took half an hour to get there, which gave Keigo time to e-mail Sakaki as well as read reports from all the other squadron leaders. Things seemed to be going as well as could be expected. Hiyoshi was efficient, Jirou was – awake for once, and getting things done with the startling, buoyant efficiency that he always displayed during his periods of manic alertness. There was no news from either Akazawa or Kajimoto, which Keigo chose to interpret as good news.

Oshitari knocked and entered without waiting for Keigo to invite him in. If possible, he looked even worse than he had yesterday morning, dressed in an indifferent T-shirt and pair of jeans, eyes rimmed with shadowy fatigue.

Although Oshitari always managed to pass as remarkably good-looking even at his worst.

Keigo's first words to Oshitari were, "Good work."

Some tension went out of Oshitari's shoulders, and he sat down in the rattan chair in front of Keigo's oversized desk. "Thank you. You too."

"I need you to do something for me."

"That's a novelty. What is it?"

"Haginosuke and I will be heading out to investigate InSec tomorrow. Kabaji will take over most of the administrative duties, but I need someone to be acting president while I'm away. That'll either be you or Ohtori, depending on your decision."

Oshitari blinked, reached up to remove his glasses, and then frowned consideringly. "For how long?"

"If we get caught? Possibly a long time."

"It's not like you to take risks like that."

"As you may have guessed, we're running out of options. I need information," Keigo said sharply. "Besides, I've never known you to have a false precognition."

"Uh, about that. Look, Atobe, I might be able to precog more information for you." Keigo's answering glance must have been dubious, because Oshitari hurried to elaborate. "I just need to find the right way to counteract the suppressants. I haven't taken any pills since the night before last, but normally the effects take a week to wear off. But there should be something that speeds up the drug clearance, antagonises the physiological mode of action maybe--"

"Hold on. Slow down. You're not being coherent." He noted the agitation in Oshitari's gaze. "You've been on psionic suppressant drugs _all along_?"

"I don't expect you to understand."

"Well good, because I don't."

"But I can help you. You're not up to precognising anything right now."

"If we could _move_ beyond stating the obvious, I'd rather appreciate it--"

"You're not going to die. I won't _let_ you."

A ringtone started up on Keigo's wristcomm -- a twentieth-century Bruce Springsteen single.

"I'm not sure whether that's excellent or terrible timing," Keigo said. He checked the identity of the callers. "Or both."

"Who's that?" asked Oshitari. He'd always been good at reading the inflections of Keigo's voice.

"Momoshiro. Echizen's with him."

#

The two Seigaku runners approached Hyoutei headquarters on their flyers, identical black machines with thin curved aerodynamic bodies and silent engines. Even at a distance Keigo could tell which vehicle was Echizen Ryoma's; it was the one that moved like it was an extension of the pilot's own body.

They eased onto the rooftop in symmetrical perfect landings and then stepped out. They appeared calm but alert. Momoshiro Takeshi's expression was cautious behind his genial grin – but well, Momoshiro was always watchful. Echizen was Echizen. He walked over to the garage, under the eaves of which Keigo and Oshitari were waiting, and scrutinised Keigo, with that glint in his eyes that managed to look both pensive and obnoxious at once.

Keigo raised an eyebrow. "Haven't managed to kill yourself yet, I see."

Echizen tilted his baseball cap. "Still ugly as ever, I see."

"Is it okay to have a private conversation here?" Momoshiro asked.

"We're on the rooftop of a five-storey building. Seems private enough to me." Oshitari's snark factor always went up by a factor of three when Momoshiro was in the vicinity.

"Are you here on behalf of Tezuka, or is this a personal visit?" _Is Tezuka awake yet?_

The breeze idled with Oshitari's hair. Faint sounds drifted up to them from the streets below – motor vehicles, conversations, footsteps. Momoshiro folded his arms across his chest. He was a muscular young man with an indifferent haircut, nice eyes and a nice smile. At sixteen, Echizen was a little shorter than Momoshiro, but showed great promise of height. He resembled a badly-dressed television model. It was well-known that girls throughout Tokyo regularly broke their hearts over Echizen. No doubt the women were starting to join in.

"We're not speaking for Tezuka."

Keigo measured Momoshiro's sentence. It was a statement that could mean many things. "Oshitari, get some wine and cola from my room. And four glasses."

While Oshitari was gone Keigo led the Seigaku runners to a garden table near the railed edge of the roof. Echizen relaxed into his chair when he sat down, the brim of his cap lowered over his eyes. Evidently not planning to take part in this parley.

"I heard that you talked Akazawa out of surrendering to InSec," Momoshiro said.

Atobe leaned back in his seat. "You're exaggerating my influence over St. Rudolph, I assure you."

"You killed Mizuki, didn't you?"

"No. For the record, no. Not that I see how that'd encourage Akazawa to listen to me."

Oshitari appeared with bottles of Sauvignon Blanc, root beer, and mineral water, and the requested glasses, all balanced on a silver tray. There was some shifting and clinking as they sorted out the drinks.

Keigo said, "Did you come to level petty accusations at us? If I were you I'd be worrying about more urgent things."

Momoshiro knitted his brows at Echizen, but the younger boy was gulping down his dark carbonated drink and pointedly ignoring everyone. Momoshiro sighed. "Vice-president Oishi came to Hyoutei about a month ago, inviting you to join us and Chief Superintendent Inoue."

"The legalisation of runner syndicates. Yes. We turned him down."

"Why?"

Keigo took his time sipping at his white wine. "I should have thought the reasons were obvious. It's an impractical, bloody plan. And it goes against what Hyoutei stands for."

"Bloody," Momoshiro leaned forward, "but not impractical."

Somewhere in the distant streets, a siren blared.

Momoshiro tried again. "Atobe. We're _runners_, aren't we?"

"Exactly."

Oshitari was studying his own fingers. His eyes were hard.

"Why?" Momoshiro repeated.

Keigo grew impatient. "What do you want me to say? Let me tell you this --" He rose to his feet. "As long as I _live_, you will not find me working with or for the government of Shinnihon. Is that very clear? I really don't have time to waste talking to you. "

He turned to walk away, but Momoshiro reached out and caught his arm. "I want a _reason_."

"I have my own reasons," said Keigo, pulling easily out of the grapple-hold. "You'll have to find your own."

No more was said after that, and soon Momoshiro and Echizen mounted their respective vehicles and moved quietly off into the sky.

#

After the pair from Seigaku had left he could not shake off a feeling of ill-humour. It lingered even despite the impressive amount of work he managed to get done that evening, and his sleep that night, drug-free, was suitably restless. The next day dawned sunny and exuberant, and halfway through an exquisite breakfast of pancakes and berry compote, Haginosuke called:

"Tell me how amazing I am," he said in a liquid, drawling voice.

"You're done already? Come on up."

"I'm already outside. Let me in." Haginosuke needed no invitation to reach for the mixing bowl of batter and start making pancakes for himself. He cooked them very thin, like crepes, and flipped them without the help of a spatula, relying only on the easy movement of his wrist. Then he smothered them in an unholy quantity of butter and sugar, sat down at the breakfast counter, and without prompting began talking in a rush:

"So yesterday was _absolutely horrendous._ Some _awful_ woman tried to proposition me, _and_ I spent twelve hours skulking around the InSec grounds, mapping out their cameras and sensors. I had to climb into the _sewer_ once. And the InSec agents kept capturing my electronic spies! I spent a _fortune_ in espionage insects and little nanobots, all for your sake. Tell me I am a wonderful person."

"I'll take you jewellery shopping," Keigo said, and after giving Haginosuke time to absorb this offer with delight, asked, "What did you find out?

Haginosuke stuffed his mouth with pancake and butter, made sloppy and approving noises, then placed his infodevice between them and set it to holomode.

"Who's the current Chief of Internal Security?" It was obviously a trick question, but Keigo decided to play along.

"Last time I checked, that was a highly classified state secret."

"Wrong answer!" A holovid flashed above the infodevice, showing an man in his early forties, dressed in grey slacks and a rumpled shirt. As he walked through a large compound, guards and men and women in dark suits alike were bowing to him in respect. He responded to all of them with a friendly, distracted smile.

Keigo studied the picture. "That's--"

"Tezuka Kuniharu. The eleventh generation eldest son of House Tezuka, former rising star of the corporate sector, best-known in our circles as the father of Seigaku president and runner extraordinaire, Tezuka Kunimitsu."

"That guy's in charge of InSec."

"Yes."

"You're _sure_--"

"Don't insult my abilities."

Keigo contemplated Tezuka Kuniharu for a while. He was a gentle-voiced man, who walked at a leisurely, even slothful, pace – and paused his journey continually to chat to his subordinates.

"He's good with people."

"Don't you need to be . Anyhow I did some more background research last night. You know about Tezuka Kunikazu being Chief of National Police, right? Tezuka's grandfather. Now officially Tezuka Kuniharu has never been involved with the government of any kind, and most of my contacts told me that they were under the impression that he'd been estranged from his father for quite a while. Choosing to work in the private sector and all that. So nobody thought it was weird when Tezuka chose to join Seigaku. Since Seigaku's so vanilla and all that. But you don't get to be head of InSec without having worked in internal affairs for a really, really long time. Decades. So that means that Kuniharu's corporate work was just a cover."

"And that means – Tezuka's government ties are much, much closer than we thought they were."

"Exactly. Inoue Mamoru has nothing to do with this. Tezuka is loyal to his family – has been loyal to his family all along."

"This plan of theirs. The rehabilitation of runner syndications. The death-knell of organised crime in Nippon. They've been planning it since _before_ Tezuka joined Seigaku. They've been preparing for it for _years_. Except that begs the question, how did they manage it for so long? Who's the Immune who's protecting them from the runner Precogs?"

Haginosuke nodded vigorously. "I knew you'd catch on quickly. But anyway shouldn't InSec be filled with Immunes? It seems like the sort of psionic they'd draft on a regular basis."

"How many Immunes have you met in your entire lifetime?"

"...Good point."

"There's _somebody_ with significant psychic power, protecting them. And I'd rather like to know who. Tezuka's own Immune gift isn't strong enough to account for a plan like this going unnoticed for years."

"Then we can find out." Haginosuke polished off the last of his pancakes. "But we can't break into InSec. Honestly, it's just not doable. We'd need a telepath _and_ a telekinetic, as well as myself, to get anywhere near anything classified. I was awfully worried yesterday that they were going to trace my bugs that they caught; luckily all my stuff's black market, and purchased anonymously. But physically getting in ourselves is going to be--"

"You're right."

Haginosuke's eyes rounded. "Wait. You're not going to lecture me about inadequate effort and giving up too easily?"

"I'm sure you can come up with an appropriate approximation of said lecture in your imagination. But there's somewhere else we can try first before trying to crack InSec."

"Where?" asked Haginosuke.

"The Tezuka mansion."


	10. Chapter 8

As soon as they approached the Imperial District of Nippon Keigo was assaulted by a claustrophobic, oppressive sense of nostalgia. Irrationally he expected, as he and Haginosuke joined the AI-controlled, streamlined, clouds of traffic circling the city skyline, some secret implant in his retina to flare, some messenger molecule in his bloodstream to signal - or else some telepath, buried in the bowels of the Palace, to jerk upright in recognition of Keigo's psychic signature.

_Your inability to underestimate your own importance never fails to surprise me_, Sakaki had once said.

Yet it was Sakaki who had made Keigo undergo months of testing, all those years ago: PET scans, magnetic resonance, biomarker evaluation - and then the reconfigurations: iris coloration, fingerprint grafts, gene therapy to alter Keigo's blood type and hair colour. Sakaki had even paid an Immune to guard Keigo for years, until the most powerful imperial precognitive, Fuji Yumiko, resigned both her position and her Shinnihon citizenship to relocate to the neighbouring star system.

"I would not have been able to do this ten years ago," Sakaki had told him at the time. "The Silver Emperor's grip weakens."

"Where shall we park?" Haginosuke's voice cut through his reverie.

Keigo had forgotten to consider the problem of their vehicles. "...Botanical gardens," he answered, after some thought. "Aerial traffic's banned there, which means that if we have to remote summon the flyers in an emergency, there'll be minimal obstacles."

"We'd never be able to use those LAFVs legally again after pulling a stunt like that," Haginosuke sniffed. "But I suppose your idea has merit. You know, I don't think I've ever been in this part of town before."

"I have," Keigo said.

It was about a fifteen-minute walk from the underground parking at the gardens to their destination. It should have taken seven, really, but Haginosuke kept pausing to scrutinise various specimens of vegetation, and Keigo was in a tolerant mood, mostly because they were finally doing something instead of merely being reactive.

"We should come here more often," Haginosuke said, lightly trailing his fingers along a wall of kudzu vines.

Keigo answered, "This is the best-guarded district in Shin Tokyo."

"I mean to visit, not to commit crime. Speaking of which," Haginosuke let his gaze rest on a pair of heavily customised women lounging on a picnic blanket, "with the amount of legit money you can get in places like these, I'm surprised Sakaki even bothers with Hyoutei."

"You underestimate Hyoutei's profit margins."

"_Do_ I?" Haginosuke threw Keigo a sly look. "Should I be asking for a raise, then?"

"Bring it up at your next performance review."

"But we don't _have_ performance reviews— " Haginosuke's voice trailed off as they emerged from a sidegate into the cul-de-sac of an elegant residential lane. "Wow. Wish I could afford _that_."

Keigo eyed the half-dozen or so mansions that sprawled out along the crescent lane they had just entered, only mildly impressed. "Sakaki's home is several times the size."

"Sakaki doesn't live in Imperial District territory. How much does land in this area cost, a million yen per square metre?"

"Probably more."

Haginosuke let the conversation lapse as he fiddled with a program on his wristcomm device – some sort of surveillance add-on, judging from the holographic display. Then he said: "There's no-one at home."

Keigo's brow lifted as he saw the house that Haginosuke was gesturing to.

Built Japanese-style, with tiled sloping roofs and a surrounding yew hedge for privacy, the building was no larger than the average outer suburban family home. The window shutters, made from synthetic rice paper, were closed to the air. A discrete traditional garden nestled in the front courtyard.

The overall effect was one of restraint and propriety. "How very Tezuka," Keigo said.

"Don't gawk." Haginosuke took hold of Keigo's wrist as they entered the front driveway, leading him around the side of the house. The garden was much larger than it seemed at first sight, expanding into a system of ponds and bamboo fountains.

They reached a sliding screen door at the back and Haginosuke pressed his face to a retinal scanner that Keigo hadn't even noticed was there.

The door opened.

Keigo was surprised. "That was easier than I expected."

"Oh, but it wasn't. It's just that I'm _good_. Well, shall we?"

They entered what turned out to be the dining room, unremarkable save for an ikebana arrangement of rose and lotus leaf sitting on a wooden tablestand, A folding screen painted with cranes partitioned the area; walking beyond it, they found the main living area.

Haginosuke wrinkled his nose. "It's so _neat_."

"Not everyone is as fond of living amidst complete chaos as you are." Keigo looked around. There was a flatscreen embedded into the wall. "Would you be able to hack that, do you think?"

The smaller boy reached into the back pocket of his slim-fit jeans and extracted a slimline, pearl-grey infodevice, which he flipped open. "I can try." A flurry of fingers on buttons, followed by a murmured series of commands that Keigo couldn't catch.

The flatscreen lit up, flicking its way through a series of loading screens before resolving into a series of menus typical of any ordinary household information sytem.

"What do you want to see?" asked Haginosuke.

"Let's start with their inbox."

Twenty minutes later they had accumulated a near-encyclopedic collection of facts about Tezuka Kunikazu's online mystery novel reading group, about the local judo dojo which he ran (apparently also attended by several cabinet ministers and Shin Tokyo notables), and every drinking party held within Shinnihon Law Enforcement in the last six months.

Haginosuke switched off the flatscreen, looking disappointed. "It seems like Tezuka's grandfather is the only one who ever uses this system for communications."

"Does Tezuka Kuniharu even _live_ here?" Keigo asked.

"Officially, no. Although his wife does, and I'm pretty sure Tezuka used to come back and visit even when he was active in Seigaku. Tezuka should still be in the Neue Bundesrepublik, at that neuromedical centre in Kapitalstadt."

"Not for long, though. At least not according to Oshitari."

"Yeah, Oshitari's pretty reliable. Speaking of which," Haginosuke narrowed his mismatched eyes, "would you be able to precog this area, get some information that way?"

"That's a good idea." He did a visual scan of the area, attempted to focus his mind in order to activate his psionic gift, only to find himself distracted by the sight of one of Haginosuke's espionage insects, a tree cricket, resting on the other boy's shoulder.

Haginosuke was gazing at him curiously. Keigo scowled and tried again.

This time he closed his eyes to get rid of visual stimuli. He stilled his mind, _reached_ for - and found himself wondering, with an alarm he had not felt earlier, about Oshitari's premonition regarding his impending death.

It took a third failure for him to realise what was happening.

"It's not going to work," Keigo said. "I think this place has Immune cover."

Haginosuke looked dumbfounded for a split second, but recovered quickly. "Well, that's crap news."

"What that implies is either they've paid an Immune to protect this house, meaning that there's something to hide here, or someone living here is an Immune."

"So either we should search this place from top to bottom, or get the hell out of here."

"We're staying," Keigo said. "Put your insects on high alert."

"They _are_ already on high alert. But they won't pick up anything that doesn't come right onto the property, and once someone arrives it'll be too late for us to get out of here."

"Set your gun to taser."

Haginosuke didn't look happy about it, but he followed Keigo through the rest of the house.

Eventually Keigo paused at a doorway. "This must have been Tezuka's room."

Bare and neat as the rest of the house, the small bedroom nevertheless retained a certain anachronistic air, one that Keigo recognised from the times he and Sakaki travelled offplanet to visit the homes they'd lived in before he joined Hyoutei. While someone evidently kept the floor vacuumed and the shelves (built-in, filled with school trophies and fishing lures and a motley collection of rocks) dusted, there were no pillows on the bed. The wall monitor hanging above the desk in the corner was cycling through a series of pictures featuring Tezuka Kunimitsu when he was no more than thirteen or fourteen years old.

"Want me to break into that one as well?" Haginosuke offered.

"Please."

Going by the dates on the stored messages, the inbox on this system had not been used in several years. The bulk of the stored mail was school correspondence, although there was a smattering of personal mail, including a terse note from Sanada Genichirou wishing Tezuka Merry Christmas, dated December 2465.

"There's a letter from Yamato Yuudai," Haginosuke said, pointing to the relevant heading with a manicured finger. Impatient, Keigo reached out to tap it open.

_Sender: Yamato Yuudai [address concealed]  
Subject: About our next meeting_

Your father tells me that you have made up your mind. As you may have guessed, I was delighted to hear your decision.

Even now you may be feeling uncertainty. Know that it is worth it, Kunimitsu. I shall not lie; there will be many times when you will wonder whether you made the right choice. But believe in yourself, and I will also believe in you. Your father's blood runs in your veins, after all. I believe that you will do more for this cause than I ever will.

I will introduce you to Ryuuzaki Sumire next week. As a warning, she is not aware of our prior acquaintance, or of my purpose in being at Seigaku. However, I think she will be sympathetic to our goals. One of our early goals will be to slowly acquaint her with our ideals for reform.

I look forward to working with you. 

Keigo frowned. "Nothing we didn't know in here," he said dismissively. He scrolled through the rest. "Can you forward the all data on this system to my mailbox?"

"I can back it up to my infodevice. I already did that with the one in the main hall."

Keigo sat on the bed, thinking, as Haginosuke performed the file transfer. From what what he remembered the Tezuka family had never been considered a significant player in politics. Unlike the Sanada family, which combined a military tradition older than Nippon itself with a a startling talent for high intrigue, Tezuka government employees were best-known for doing their job – and doing it _very_ well. They had a reputation for integrity and loyalty that was second-to-none.

_Blind dogs_, Sakaki had once accused. But that had happened after Tezuka Kunikazu shut down one of Sakaki's media companies for libel against the Cabinet.

Tezuka himself fit the archetype to a tee, at least insofar as Keigo knew him. But Tezuka's father? You didn't get very far in InSec without being a very good liar.

"We need to find out where Tezuka Kuniharu lives," he mused.

"How is that going to help? I doubt he takes his work home with him."

"I need—" _To find out how much he knows about me_, he added silently. He was not ready to discuss that with Haginosuke.

"Maybe we're going about this the wrong way," Haginosuke suggested. He dropped into a relaxed squat, arms folded at his knees. "Doesn't the Tezuka family have enemies?"

"Sakaki."

"No, I mean enemies with more power than that. What about within the government itself, or the great families? Every runner syndicate worth mentioning in Nippon has above-ground sponsors."

_Yes, and every last one of those sponsors has reason to want the dead Crown Prince dead again._ He refused to reply. Irritation flitted across Haginosuke's features.

The impasse was broken by Haginosuke's wristcomm flashing bright violet. "Someone's coming home."

Immediately Keigo was at the door, opening it. "Let's move out."

Another light scintillated at Haginosuke's wrist. "Wait," Haginosuke said, with a sharp sudden note of panic. "Don't—"

Then Haginosuke drew his gun and an a white electric pulse soared past Keigo, missing his ear by centimetres.

A female voice spoke. "My husband is not a forgiving man. I suggest that you do not attack me."

Keigo, who had drawn and aimed in the moment Haginosuke fired, stepped back, allowing the newcomer to enter the room.

_Tezuka's mother,_ he thought, _she is Tezuka's mother._

Medium height and slender, with no hint of customisation on her face, Tezuka Ayana exuded a deceptive air of fragile feminity. Appearing not to notice that two firearms were trained on her, she bowed to both of them.

"It's an honour to meet you at last, Keigo-sama." She was dressed in a plain lilac kimono. A silver floral pin rested in her hair bun. "And you too, what is your name?" When they did not lower their guns, she continued, "Be at ease. There is no one else in the house."

She extended one hand gracefully, and a black dragonfly whirred from her palm across the room to perch on Haginosuke's forehead. One of Haginosuke's espionage insects.

"Sit down," said Tezuka Ayana. She took the desk chair, but motioned towards the floor.

Keigo signalled to Haginosuke that he should put away his weapon and take a seat, then did the same himself. "How do you know who I am?" asked Keigo.

"Shouldn't I?" Ayana smiled. "Your father and I have been good friends for a very long time." Seeing the alarm on his face, she added, "Your _adoptive_ father, I mean."

"You're friends with Sakaki?"

"Sakaki is your adopted _father_?" Haginosuke said, incredulous. Then, in a different voice: "Oh, of _course_ he is. I don't know why I didn't see it before."

"Sakaki's never told me about this." Keigo watched Ayana's face carefully.

"That man," she murmured. "So intelligent, and yet he has no idea how to read people. _You're_ much better with that skill, aren't you, Keigo-sama?"

She was challenging him, he felt that. But in what way? He studied her face, reached out with a tendril of telepathic energy, and met... Blankness.

"You're an Immune," he breathed. "You're the Immune. The one who's protecting InSec."

A curve of her lips.

He reached for his holster. "You realise that I'll have to neutralise you," he said coldly. Bad enough that Rikkai had Kirihara; but if InSec continued to strike without warning like they had the other day-

She said gently: "Keigo-sama, haven't you ever wondered how you managed to go undiscovered all these years?"

Haginosuke was looking at them, perplexed; Keigo felt like his head was exploding. _I knew Sakaki had arranged for some sort of psionic protection, but I never really questioned where it was coming from._

But there were so _few_ people with true Immune gifts; even the old man himself only had one in his employ, whom he kept on his person at all time...

"How can I believe you?" Keigo asked finally.

She reached into her kimono and pulled out a tiny crystal infodevice, dialling a number.

The person who answered sounded surprised, possibly suspicious. _"Ayana?"_

It was Sakaki's voice.

"That's enough," Keigo snapped. "I'm convinced."

There was a long pause. _"Keigo. What are you doing with Ayana?" _Sakaki's tone was restrained, but a hint of warning bled through. _"Don't hurt her."_

Ayana was unperturbed. "You're overreacting, Tarou. Keigo-sama is just startled."

Keigo said, "There's no point in leaving the enemy with a strategic advantage."

When Sakaki spoke again, it was with a strong streak of sarcasm. _"How strange, Keigo; I managed to control Hyoutei for about five decades without a trace of precognition skill or even the option of hiring precognitives. And yet I find you reduced to a blubbering wreck, not even a week after your psionic abilities have failed you."_

Keigo would not usually have argued, especially in public. But there was anger at Sakaki's having concealed something as important as this from him. "For something that's been in your care for five decades, Hyoutei doesn't seem to rank very high on your priority list. Do you honestly not care that InSec might launch an aerial attack at any moment? Or does _Ayana-san_ here provide you with all the InSec information you need?"

_"Keigo."_ The tone brooked no discussion. _"You owe Ayana a great deal. Possibly your life. Certainly your freedom. "_

"You told me you had stopped providing Immune cover for me, that there was no need to."

_"I stopped paying someone to do it. That was because Ayana found out and offered to protect you herself." _

"Why?" Keigo asked, looking at the petite woman.

Her face softened. "You may not remember me, Keigo, but I carried you in my arms when you were just a baby."

"So you feel some maternal urge to protect me, but you're happy to help your husband's underlings slaughter me if that's what it takes. What an admirable family instinct."

The accusation struck home; her long-lashed eyes lost their serenity. "I sent my son to the streets, knowing that you were there, knowing that the best children of your generation are learning to live with violence and uncertainty and lawlessness. Do you think I wanted any of you to be there? Or do you think this is the way that you ought to live? Tarou has taught you very badly if that is the case."

_"Ayana—"_ She disconnected the call, cutting off communication with Sakaki.

"Long before Sakaki taught me anything," Keigo said quietly, "another teacher of mine showed me that living above the law is far worse than anything outside the law can be."

"That's true as well." This time there was empathy in her face. "But nevertheless, the law ought to be just, and all of us should be subject to it. Without exception."

"You're a Tezuka through and through."

"I married into the right family." She had regained her initial, all-consuming poise, but there was an air of expectancy around her that Keigo would have probed telepathically, if he were able. She wanted – something, out of this conversation.

"Does your husband know about me?"

Ayana hesitated. "I have not told him," she said. "He may have developed suspicions, if he is not too busy with other things. But he has not mentioned it to me."

"I'm sure Hyoutei and Rikkai are under intense scrutiny from InSec at the moment."

Ayana shook her head. "Perhaps you don't understand this, having left the palace long before you got to know most of us – in fact, before half the court even knew you existed – but in our world, the only thing we care to know about a runner syndicate is which political power controls it. In the case of Hyoutei, it is Sakaki Tarou. In the case of Rikkai, it is the Sanada clan. And with Seigaku, it is Echizen Rinko. Rinko was only persuaded to my husband's cause when her own son chose to become a runner. None of our plans were possible before that happened."

"If the syndicates themselves are so insigificant, why send your only son to become a runner? You can't tell me you sent him there for four years, risking his life, just to amuse yourself."

"How can you change a world that you don't understand? Whatever you may think about the Tezuka family, Keigo, we do not like being hypocrites. We wished to enter the world of the runners, become a part of it."

"And gain political ammunition against the Cabinet ministers and the aristocrats who were involved in runner activity."

"Tezuka only passed my husband information that was relevant to the mission that was given to him. He has never even mentioned you by name to us, Keigo."

"Are you trying to win me over?" asked Keigo.

"Do you think you can be won over?"

He closed his eyes, breathed in slowly. Then he looked straight at her. "There is no place within the law for me," he told her. "I was born above it, and I will live outside it."

She nodded. "I thought that might be the case. I think it would be best if you left now, before my father-in-law comes back."

"Come on, Haginosuke."

She saw them to the front door. Just before they left she said, "Keigo-sama. If you ever want to ask any questions, please call me. You can get my number from Tarou, he will give it to you."

Keigo didn't look back.

#

"So I think we need to talk," drawled Haginosuke, as they glided into the rooftop garage at headquarters.

Keigo dismounted and thumbed open the internal access to his apartments. "You're not the one who decides when we get to talk. Nor are you the ones who decides what information you are privy to or not."

"Sure, then. I'll just go straight to Gakuto and have a little chat with him about this. Tell him that our fearless president is actually some secret lovechild from _very, very_ high up and that even Tezuka's own mother calls him _sama_. There's only about half a dozen families that are actually that important in the whole of Nippon, so I'm sure we'll figure it out eventually, even if we're not very bright—"

Keigo spun, yanked at Haginosuke's silk shirt, and slammed him up against the wall of the garage.

His knuckles ground against the smaller boy's sternum, prompting a yelp of pain. "Okay, I get the point, I'll back off." Once Keigo's hold relaxed, he added, "But don't you think it's a security risk for _us_, if we don't know what we're facing?"

"If you knew," Keigo said, "you wouldn't want me here anymore. You'd think I was a liability."

He let go. Haginosuke straightened his shirt. "Maybe," his voice was husky, "I wouldn't want you _here_ anymore. But I would go with you." When Keigo cast a bemused gaze on him, he added, "Not just me. I think Oshitari and Shishido would too. And you know Jirou and Kabaji would follow you to the ends of the universe."

"So what are you suggesting, that I dismantle Hyoutei?"

"Not dismantle it. Move it. Or – expand its operations. The ones who like the idea of decriminalisation can stay. The ones who don't, well, we can go with you. It's not like Sakaki doesn't have interests in about fifteen or sixteen star systems."

"What about the work that we do here for Sakaki?"

"I'm sure Sakaki will manage to restructure it somehow. I imagine Tezuka Kuniharu has got some sort of sensible plan for all of it; he'd hardly try to get rid of runner syndicates just to let the economy of Nippon collapse in a week. It's really not that bad an idea you know." Haginosuke pursed his lips. "_You_ like Hyoutei, but that's because you're in charge here and you don't really see what happens on the ground. The streets of Nippon are a bloody mess, Keigo. I think we help more than we hurt, but you have to admit we don't help very much at all."

_But the streets are honest,_ Keigo thought. _They have never lied to me. They have never pretended to love me. And they have never tried to make me become what I am not._

But the longer he thought about it, the more he acknowledged the truth of Haginosuke's words. He didn't _know_ the streets, not really. Sakaki had always protected him from the reality of them.

"In a different world," Haginosuke said, watching Keigo's face, "Kotoha would still be alive."

Grief bloomed then, in a way that it had not since he first found the girl's body. "I knew her," he said. "When I was with Sakaki – before I joined Hyoutei. Her family was wealthy. It was foolish of her to become a runner."

"Do you even know why she did it?" Haginosuke asked, the accusation in his voice now laid bare. "Do you know why I became a runner? Or why Shishido became a runner? Not everyone takes to the syndicates because their adopted father is a business mogul, you know. Or because they're insanely psionic like Oshitari. Or because they're just ambitious, like Hiyoshi. Most of us _have no choice_." He came to a stop suddenly, as if he'd suddenly run out of breath to speak. His cheeks were flushed.

Keigo said, "But you would _choose_ to come with me."

Haginosuke lifted his chin. His natural eye was damp. "Yes, I would. We all would, except maybe Hiyoshi."

"So maybe I should leave Hiyoshi behind, get him to lead Hyoutei under the new regime."

"Does that mean – that you've –"

"I haven't decided anything at all," Keigo said warningly. He headed down the steps into his rooms.

#

As he walked into his apartment he was greeted by the sight of three of his squadron leaders lounging in the sitting room. Kabaji, Oshitari and Shishido. A half-dozen or so empty beer cans lay scattered across the floor, and another six-pack sat on the coffee table, still untouched.

They were an odd trio to be sitting and drinking together, even if they were unofficially the highest ranking of the squadron leaders. More to the point, they had invaded his quarters without permission.

Oshitari spotted him first. "Ah, Atobe." The First Squadron leader stood up, his cheeks flushed. "You're here sooner than expected, I thought we were going to run out of alcohol."

"What the hell are the three of you doing?" Keigo said, almost too surprised to speak harshly. "It's the middle of the day, and I left you in charge, Oshitari."

"Do it before I lose my nerve," Oshitari said dreamily, "I have a splitting headache already."

One second Kabaji's hand had closed around his forearm, hard, and the next he was flying through the air and landing belly-up on the carpet, his arms twisted painfully behind his back.

"Kabaji, what are you doing?" When that did nothing he attempted to twist out, lashing out telepathically at Kabaji's mind at the same time.

_Sorry, Atobe, but we have to do this._ Oshitari's voice in his mind, sleek and powerful and overwhelming. _Go to sleep now_.

Somewhere in the black fog that immediately descended on his consciousness he thought quite clearly, _Damn it, I always knew Oshitari was holding back_. Then his mind drifted.


	11. sidefic: He and You

Senescence is an odd thing.

The night I first heard of you it was raining in New Kantou – thunderstorming, really, with floods in the provinces and aerial traffic at a standstill everywhere in the city. Ten thousand people had been rendered homeless in Nuevo Hokkaido, ninety-eight hospitals had gone on bypass, and all over the the Net themes of sedition, samizdat, and reform were trending. Internal Security personnel were pulling all-nighters.

I went to see him and thought I would find him writing press releases, or floating online, watching everything unfold from a virtual reality chair, or else preparing to go out himself, to defy lightning and precipitation and darkness, fighting the fabric of nature as he was so fond of doing.

I found him lounging on a chenille throw blanket in a locked parlour, a titanium notepad propped against his thighs, a stylus held like a cigarette between his fingers. Juniper and cherrywood burned in the fireplace.

I kissed him and his lips tasted of wine.

"Your people are dying," I said, by way of reproach.

"All of us are dying," he answered, drawing circular paths on the notepad. "Come and see what I am planning. Would you like me with blue eyes?"

He asked this coquettish question with a restrained air; I could not tell whether the next moment would turn to sensuality or politics.

"You are the emperor," I told him. Dyed irises are cheap and reversible, lenses even more so.

"I shall take that as a _no_." The stylus skimmed the surface of the notepad. "What about blond hair?"

It is not his way to be frivolous, and therefore I was confused. "I do not think this is the time—" I began. He caught my hand and held it to his chest.

"I am dying." His heartbeat, slow and steady, pulsed beneath my palm. An autologous transplant, inserted thirty years back. "I _wish_ to be dying."

I lay beside him and traced the lines in his neck. He had been twenty-five for two hundred years.

#

You were born of woman, in-vivo. The designing of you was slow, the conception quick. I was there when he spilled the seed that became your life. You are more natural than I expected, and less natural than you would like to be.

I told him I did not wish him to die.

"Then should I live forever?" he asked. "If I could, I would!"

I stroked his black hair and he leaned into my touch, measuredly, finitely. He has never accepted strength from anyone.

"This one," he said, referring to you, "It is the sixth time. I tire of this." He did not include his three daughters, full-grown, in the numbering of his attempts.

"There are other ways," I murmured. Fleetingly I fancied I could see silver strands in his dark fringe. But it was a trick of the light.

He smiled crookedly. "I have not had much success with democracy."

_You will never have success_, I wanted to tell him, _in areas that require compromise_. But I could tell him nothing about himself that he did not already know. For as long as I knew him, he had been old and wise and full of self-knowledge; I had never seen him otherwise.

The distance between his age and mine is twice the distance between my age and yours. My understanding of him is surface, discrete, a long half-century of unexplicated memories; my knowledge of you, child, is the knowledge of my own heart.

I know the scars on his skin and the breath in his voice and the darkness of his grafted eyes. I know him in his crest and signature and the lives he has destroyed, in the hard glitter of skyscrapers and the curve of blackened seashores.

I know him in my fear and desire.

I know your skinned knees, your papercuts, your irrationality and your love. I know the eyes he gave you and the eyes I gave you. I know your fear that became my fear, your hope that became my hope. I know everything you were too young to hide.

As he knows me, so I know you. But I have already surprised him at least twice.

#

And yet it was years before I met you.

I went into space again, as had become my habit. There was always work to be done, on other planets and moons and asteroids: rocks to be terraformed, governments to be appeased, and money, money, in the giving and taking and borrowing. And I did his work as often as I did mine.

There were other reasons to travel. It was painful being near him and yet at a distance. We were no longer lovers, if indeed we ever were. And even in the early days he had never confided in me. But it was difficult to cease hoping.

I heard nothing more about you. His letters were always witty and informative – and more regular than I expected. They spoke of his grandchildren, of his disputes with his ministers, of intragalactic trade, of the autumn foliage outside his rooms. I interpreted silence as failure and assumed you were dead.

By the time I returned he had changed. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he was the same, but laid bare, the old veil of charm stripped away. His despotism had not increased – if anything, he was more _laissez-faire_ than he had been. But he no longer ruled as a ruler who expects to live with the consequences of his actions.

It was rumoured that he was dying. Such rumours had always persisted, and I saw nothing to give credence to the tales. His physical perfection remained unmarred. His surgeries and medications did not deviate from their usual pattern. And yet I was anxious.

He summoned me one evening and threw a dossier in my face as I entered his office. The holographic data came to life all around me, streaming.

"Illegal drug imports, Sakaki?" he said. "At least have the skill to go undiscovered."

I remained unperturbed. "They're monoclonals, and the Shiraishi monopoly on them is killing hundreds of citizens each year."

"Are you suggesting I turn a blind eye?"

"I'll provide you with incentives equivalent to the evaded tax."

"What if," he lifted his chin, "I overthrew the Shiraishi patents?"

I was silent in my surprise. He had always been pragmatic rather than idealistic; this suggestion from him was unprecedented.

"It would not be enough to change the lives of the people," I answered finally.

"Ah, so you invoke justice when it helps your cause, but balk at the thought of true reform. You are truly a child of this country." While I struggled for a reply he stood and came towards me, draped his arm across my shoulders. "Come, I have someone I want you to meet."

He steered me through metallic corridors and lush summer gardens, deep into the heart of the palace complex. The night was warm; the familiar scent of his cologne filled my nostrils, ambergris and bergamot and indigenous spices.

I was ushered into a minor, hidden palace, so discrete I had not known it existed, and there he brought me to you.

You were tucked away in an inner courtyard garden, lying prone across a marble bench. A holographic screen of text hovered before your intent eyes. Your concentration was absolute. You did not even notice our presence until he reached out and touched your arm.

Your eyes met his. And I saw that his gaze was not gentle, and yours was not happy.

He told you to greet me. You offered your small hand obediently, indifferently. Your hair was fair, sun-streaked, curling. Your eyes – azure, angular – barely gave me the time of the day. It was worse than when I first met your father.

"What do you think?" he asked me afterwards. There was a warning note in his voice; not all answers would be acceptable.

"He resembles a child Eros."

"More beautiful than me?"

"That would be impossible," I told him, honestly, earnestly. He laughed and showed me all the books you read, the things you had already learned. It was the first time I suspected him of exaggeration. But I had known him for half a century; I should not have been surprised.

"He is augmented, of course," I said, scrolling through the curriculum he had designed for you. Language and algebra, archery and swords.

"He'll live a longer life than mine, and with less effort."

"What about psionics?"

"Only the gifts he will need to lead. As for the rest, beyond pure cosmetics, I chose his mother and let nature take its course." He had not come from a womb, I knew that, although even the best historians had failed to locate his parent lab. But his genetics were impeccable.

"Why only one?" I asked. "Surely multiple heirs would be preferable."

"Because," he said, "incubating them is the easy part."

And if I am honest with myself; the reason I dared, the reason I took you and ran, is his face in that moment.

"I terminated the first and the fourth," he told me, looking straight in my eyes. "The first, because he was too weak to survive. The fourth, because he would have murdered me. It is why I waited so long to try again." He saw my minute shiver and ordered the servants to bring wine. "This one," he continued matter-of-factly, "he can kill me if he wishes."

#

At first I neither avoided you nor sought you out – which meant that I did not encounter you. There was little reason for our paths to cross. At best I was an intermittent resident to the imperial residence, and even when I was there, I had no reason to visit the small corner of it that was your home.

Still, I could not forget how you had dismissed me with your childish gaze. It was that recollection that sent me, piqued, to seek you out.

I passed through leaf-strewn walkways and red maple groves and found you in your small palace. You were seated at a grand piano, struggling to play the displayed music. It was plain that you could not read the notes well. Unlike most children, however, you were calm and persistent, sounding each bar painstakingly. As before, your concentration was total.

"The Anna Magdalena Notebook," I spoke out loud, when I had watched you fumble long enough. "A good choice of repertoire for elementary players, but not when your basic skills are lacking."

You regarded me with annoyance. A moment later, however, your eyes turned speculative. "Can you teach me?" you asked.

It was too good an opportunity to let by. You made space for me on the bench; I played Brahms from memory. Before the last notes of the waltz had faded you were tugging at my sleeve.

"Again," you said. 'Something else."

"I thought the point was to instruct you, not to entertain you."

"My father won't arrange lessons for me." You were suddenly shy, your gaze indirect. "He says there's no time to fit in music among all the other lessons I have. But he's wrong; I do have free time."

"Your father does not believe anything should be done unless it is done well. Perhaps he wants you to focus on your other studies."

"I'm doing well in my other studies." You were. I had seen it in the files he showed me. You were, beyond a doubt, the most educated eight-year-old on the planet.

"I can teach you," I said, finally. Secretly I was pleased that I had something you wanted. And I came to give you lessons the next night, and then the next.

"Are you always alone?" I asked, the fourth time I came to see you. "Even your father keeps his servants in his quarters."

You told me that you sent your servants away when you had no need of them. "My father chooses all of them," you said. "It's better if they aren't around."

"He's your father ." I had to resist the instinct to touch your golden hair. "It's natural for him to screen carefully the people who are close to you."

"But he shouldn't do it by murdering them," you said.

#

You are not your father – you feel too deeply, gaze too far, relent too willingly. But you are, I think, what he would have wanted.

Not that it would please you to hear this.

I began to ask the courtiers about you. Surprisingly few knew anything beyond the fact that you existed. The best-informed was your eldest sister, Aya, who lightly raked my coat with her polymeric fingernails when I mentioned your name.

"So you have seen the child," she said. "I have not."

Her eyes are green, but their shape resembles yours and his. "Then there must be a reason for it."

Keeping her head close to my chest, she tilted her chin upwards. "He is being old-fashioned. He did not need a son."

"Neither did you." Sometime after your conception she had designed herself a child, born of an incubator. I had seen him walking at her side, small and beautifully-dressed; he had the exotic perfection of an artificial baby. "He is the emperor," I reminded her, "and the primogeniture is male."

"A primogeniture that he created. You will outlive him," she warned, her breath on my collar, "and so will I."

We had grown up together, she and I. I touched my lips to her forehead, then pushed her away.

A few days later he sent word that I was not to meet with you again.

_I had not realised you were so against his musical education_, I messaged.

The reply came almost immediately. _I would not get too close to Aya if I were you._

I had known him too well and too long for me to hope, even dimly, that there was jealousy in his warning.

I typed back, _Her ambition outmatches her capacity._ It was true; but I also felt ashamed at how easily I always conceded to his authority, to his way of looking at the world.

_She is fortunate that she is precious to me_, came his final answer. I did not analyse his words too deeply, and I did not visit you again.

#

But you came to me.

The e-mail was anonymous, although a quick verification confirmed that it was from the imperial household. Its body was brief, containing a date, a time, and the location of a popular, privacy-protected virtual reality hub.

My first thought was that it was from him, except that he always signed his letters. My second consideration was the possibility of it being a trap. But I was not important enough to have enemies in the palace.

The proposed timing was not inconvenient, and with appropriate precautions a VR meeting is the safest of all assignations. On the designated afternoon, from the guarded privacy of my home, I neural-linked my self to the internet, and entered the location.

You were already waiting. You had created a viewing pavilion for us to stand on, overlooking a shallow, serene sea, kissed by the light of sunset. You had chosen to appear as your own physical self, as had I.

I checked your identity verification, warily, but you were completely anonymous. "Is it really you?" I asked.

"Our last lesson," you said, "you taught me about chromatic scales. I had a papercut on my index finger from art class, and you were wearing a green tie."

"Why did you call me here?" I realised not without concern that you were better at manipulating electronic reality than I was. It would have been a core part of your training, your preparation for rulership; it was the key to his control of the nation.

"My father won't let me see you. I wanted to keep up with my lessons." Your command was not explicit, but it was unmistakeable; like him, you expected to have your way.

In this respect, at least, you have never failed to resemble him.

"You're risking my life," I warned you. "Possibly your own."

"I don't think so. He likes you. He'd punish you, but he wouldn't kill you." You bit your lip, and despite knowing the lie of the avatar I was entranced by the bare hint of fear in your eyes. "Do you think he would kill me?"

"I do not know," I admitted. Even for someone of his lifespan, nine years was a long effort to squander. "But I don't think we should risk it."

I began to retreat, calling the logoff sequence, but you froze it, caught me in your space. "I need information from you. Things that my father won't tell me. Why did he ask you to stop coming?"

I thought of the situation and chose to simplify. "He believed I posed a security risk."

"You would never hurt me."

"Your naivete is remarkable.

"I'm not my father," you said fiercely. "I can read your thoughts. I _know_." The world bent around us; the sea turned blood-red.

I will never match your ability, but I had some skill of my own; I reached out and halted the transformations you were effecting. "You will respect my privacy or I will cease all cooperation and report this to the emperor."

You appeared genuinely alarmed at this threat. You were a child. And you were not abusing your telepathic gifts; if you had, you would have seen how difficult it is for me to say no to you. But you acquired that knowledge much later and by less magical means.

"I'll give up on the piano classes," you said. "Will you let me see you again?"

"I'll think about it. How did you manage to get here without your father knowing?"

You hesitated. "I have – a friend. Who helped me."

So, you had friends. I wondered what sort of people made it through the emperor's obsessive filtering – filtering that was inadequate, given your presence here today. "If you send me a time and a date, I will come. We should change the online location each time."

You frowned at me. "I know to do _that_." A brief lapse into childishness. I smiled at you. You turned the sky dazzling, sun-filled; the sea transformed to glitter.

I had never defied him before. I wondered what it meant.

#

We fell into a rhythm of fortnightly visits. Each time I was struck by how adroit you were in virtual spaces, how precise and lifelike the online manifestation of your body was – each golden ringlet in all its variation of shade, the black circumscribed mole below your right eye. In cyberspace you came across as much older than your usual self; I could not help wondering where your else avatar wandered, what dark electronic corners you sought out, when you were not with me.

I wondered who had taught you to use the neural links.

"He trains me himself," you informed me when I asked. "There's a private neural network in one of the galleries where I live. There are classes three times a week. I practice for an hour every day. But he won't allow me to go online."

"Your friend-"

"Kabaji. His parents are part of the imperial household agency. They have access to the neural-link chairs in the palace."

"What you are doing is very dangerous."

You were silent for some moments, then said, "If it gets too dangerous, I'll leave home."

Seized by the impulse, I asked, "Is that a request?"

The pause was longer this time. "Not yet," you said. And it was just as well. For I was not yet ready either.

I went about my business that autumn and winter, and ignored the murmurs of unrest surrounding the palace. Your sisters fought your father and among themselves. That was usual. But your existence was new, or at least not very old. And he was ill, or at least believed that he was.

Whatever the reasons, the embers of dissent in the emperor's family had been fanned into flame. And I was not immune to the fire's path.

At her behest I met your eldest sister Aya again, reluctantly. She was not a woman I could afford to insult. I had been avoiding her, for reasons she guessed easily; when she saw me she mocked me for what she perceived as my cowardice. She has always seen me as a weak man. I am not.

I asked her what she wanted from me.

"You are known," she said, "to have ties with Hyoutei. Is the organisation open to outside investment?"

My blood ran chill. Hyoutei belonged to me and me alone; not even _he_ had ever interfered in its operations. And I had been careful to keep it out of the usual politics.

"In general, no," I told her. "It is self-sufficient; it has no interest in sponsorship from outside parties."

"Then persuade it to be interested." She did not take kindly to my attempt at deflection. "You know my resources; I can make it worth their while."

I attempted a gentler route of rejection. "Syndicates are a risky and unpleasant business. You would be better off exploring legal routes of financial gain."

She shook her head. "You must have heard the news. Minako's nephew has been working in Seigaku." She was referring to your second sister. "I cannot let her be the only one with influence in the underground. You know how ambitious she is."

Minako was no more ambitious than Aya was herself. "I am sorry," I said, "my answer is final."

She was angry, then, and I had one more thing to be careful of. For she knew, and I knew, that she was more valuable to the emperor than I was.

#

You did not take much interest in your sisters, and since I had nothing pleasant to report, I saw no reason to broach the subject with you. It was obvious that you were a lonely child; your need to confide was evident, all-consuming; once you were no longer wary around me we spent most of our meetings in conversations wherein I listened and you chattered about your history classes, your tennis games with Kabaji, the books you read and the servants you spied on.

Even these days, now that you have grown more self-possessed, I still think of you as gregarious.

Shortly before Christmas you asked me to fight you.

I had trained as a fencer for ten years, once upon a lifetime, whereas you had been taking classes since you were four. I was considerably out of practice, but in person it would have been a blatantly unequal match, my weight and height easily making a joke of your skill.

In virtual reality it was quite a different matter. You outclassed me, a small blue-eyed boy with a child-sized rapier. With size and strength nullified, only skill and affinity for the neural connection counted, and I will never match you in those things.

You defeated me, and I thought how like your father you were.

You cast off your sword and let it disappear. "My sister is dead."

It must have been very fresh news; I had not heard it. "Which one?"

"Minako."

I breathed slowly, deeply. "How do you feel?" Your avatar remained expressionless; I could not guess at the emotions behind.

"I'm not sad. I've only seen her twice. I don't think she likes me – liked me, that is." I discarded my sword and we sat on the ground together. "Do you think my father did it?" you asked.

"No, he would not, he would never-" Then I realised it was the wrong thing to say, that I had acknowledged that your sisters were not expendable, that to him they were daughters, whereas you – you could not be more than an heir, and you were not permitted to be less.

If you noticed the implication, you did not show it. "Then who?"

I hesitated. "Perhaps your sister Aya," I admitted finally. You did not say anything to that. After a little while your avatar leaned its head against the shoulder of mine, and I held you. I thought of the decades I had known your family and the things I had accepted. And I was ashamed.

#

He summoned me online.

As long as I have known him he has never used avatars. He merely roams the internet, as a virus would, as an artificial intelligence would. Virtual reality is the seat of his power, from which he observes markets and weather and trends, deploys missiles, devalues currencies.

He does not permit his electronic signature to be traced; I know his presence only when he speaks.

_You will have heard what happened_, he said, as I logged onto his private virtual hub. _I trust you were not involved._

He had placed me in pure, undefined grey; he had done so before, but it was still disconcerting. "You're overestimating my courage considerably if you think I was involved."

_Untrue. There's nothing lacking in your courage. But you love me. I know you were not involved._ The space shifted to allow spatial orientation; there was a flatness at my feet representing the ground, and overhead, a white expanse that I took for a ceiling. _How do you think I should punish her?_

I dared a shrug. "She's your daughter. It's not for me to say."

Data whirled around me; walls appeared, then colours. _You're right, she is my daughter. I cannot do anything. To her._

#

You came to both funerals.

Mariko's cremation was held with the usual ostentation. She had been the best-loved of the imperial princesses, and the one least like her father - where he was aloof, she was sympathetic (even to her detractors); where he was classically, sensuously handsome, she was plain, although appealing in her petite, domestic femininity. Her in-laws, the Yamato family, had adored her unreservedly.

I saw you from a distance, holding the emperor's hand. Your hair had grown in the intervening months, the curls gathering pale and glossy around your collar. When I caught your eye you ignored me, staring out into the crowd of mourners Despite knowing that it was necessary to hide our familiarity from your father, I felt a flash of hurt.

Aya came with her son, and arrived late; they were both dry-eyed as they paid their respects. Her child was black-haired, and exquisite in face and feature; that, and the precocious intelligence in his sapphire eyes, advertised the human intervention in his genome.

I offered my incense and stopped to talk to Aya.

"You have gone too far," I said. More than anger, it was fear that I felt for her.

"I can't imagine what you might be talking about," she said, turning away.

Thereafter whenever I saw her she refused to speak to me. But when she called a fortnight later, weeping, I went to her immediately.

#

The poison was a neurotoxin, said the intensive care doctors, known for its sublethal but incapacititating effects. Personality, memory, and judgment remained intact; movement and sensation was deranged.

Would he recover? asked Aya. I looked at her child, lying on white sheets, tangled in plastic tubing. Your size, your age. The machine by the pillow made sighing sounds as it controlled his breathing.

The prognosis was not good, they told her. He would get a little better with treatment. Not enough to walk or talk.

It took her no more than a second to digest the news.

Take him off the ventilator, she ordered.

The attending physician hesitated. I could arrange a counselling session for you, first-, he suggested.

He is already useless for my purposes, she said.

She was her father's daughter.

#

The second funeral: the wind heavy, the pine trees laden with fresh-fallen snow. The venue was a churchyard; the Yukimuras were Japanese-European, more French than they were Asian, and although Aya had kept custody of both her children when she separated from her husband four years ago, she acquiesced to her in-laws' demands for a Christian burial.

You sat in the front pew with your father. I watched the back of your head with a practiced numbness. The service was subdued, the eulogies perfunctory. At the end your father brought you over to greet me.

I forced myself to meet his stare.

"I am fair to my daughters," he said, daring me to speak. I remained silent, and he leaned over to kiss me on the cheek. I reciprocated the gesture, casting a glance at your face as I did so. Your eyes were emotionless.

Later he called me to him and I went, yielding as ever. I touched him and felt the fading perfection of his body, the fragility of his skin, the arthritis in his hands. But there was a coiled strength in his limbs.

"You went too far," I told him afterwards, my head on his pillow.

"A child for a child," he answered. As always, I delighted in his touch. His capacity for affection is not great, but inasmuch as he was able, he cared for me. I had grown to believe that.

So it was with you: inasmuch as he was able, he loved you. But there are many times when trying our best is not enough.

#

Winter passed, spring came, and quietly I continued to make preparations. Since that first time you had not voiced any wish to escape the palace, but by now I had begun to experience, slightly but uneasily, the desire that you leave the circumference of his control.

You were too much like him; I did not want you to be like him. I had accepted his shortcomings for fifty years – had not even considered them shortcomings, but rather, imperial traits, necessary for Shinnihon, necessary to my admiration of him. Part of me had always been drawn to his hints of inhumanity.

But Shinnihon now was no longer what Shinnihon had been when I met him, and I was no longer twenty, and in knowing you I began to wonder what he might have been before the burden of rule was laid upon him.

We continued to meet online, and I taught you arpeggios, minuets, sonatinas; I fought you with lightsabers and lost; we talked, or rather you talked and I listened. Your days were as busy as ever. You acquired facts, new languages, martial skills. Your capacity for retaining information was extraordinary.

Unsurprisingly, you did not miss your deceased relatives, mentioning them only in terms of your father's caprice. You barely knew your aunts, and had seen your nephew only in death.

"It is a pity you do not have more friends," I said.

You looked surprised. Unlike your father's, your avatar was lifelike, wired to the emotional centers in your brain; the face of your virtual representation truly demonstrated your emotions. I wondered if you were similarly frank in the flesh.

"I have Kabaji. I have you." A little frown appeared on your forehead. "I don't think I need anyone else right now. The old man would notice."

You were so old, so young! I felt an immense sadness that so few people could see you, could love you. So it had been with _him_; I had always wondered why more people did not love him. But of course he had never allowed it. If he had ever possessed any innocence, it was long gone by the first time I met him.

You have your innocence still and fate willing, I will preserve it in you.

#

What you also still retain: your capacity for love, greater than mine, greater than his. Love led you away from him; love brought you to me.

At the beginning of spring (fine rains across Shin Tokyo, ubiquitous pale blossoms, allergic rhinitis) I logged into one of our usual designated meeting places only to find that you were not there. That was unusual. We had made the appointment recently, and you were always punctual; in fact you had a tendency to arrive early.

I waited. After some time had passed, I worried.

An hour after the agreed meeting time, I called Hyoutei. It is yours now; but in those days it was mine. I told my runners to look for unusual news from the palace, and I told them to prepare for the possibility of battle. And I told them to prepare a route that would smuggle a child out of Nippon, out of this planet, and into space. Away from me, but also away from him.

Then I went out to search for you. But you have always been better at this sort of thing than I am.

I flew to the palace in an unregistered vehicle, the rain misting up my windshields; but there was no chance of my entering the palace undiscovered. I saw no signs of commotion. I circled the palace complex once, temporarily helpless. If you were within, you were beyond my reach. If you were without – there was no means of tracking you. The ordinary, digital methods of tracing people in this country did not apply to you; officially, you did not even exist among the Shinnihon citizenry.

If I had stopped to consider it, the only person you knew, the only place you could have come to, was to me. But it is hard for me to believe that even now.

You do not need me; some part of me believes that you never did, not even then, in that moment, when you were more helpless than you had ever been in your controlled, protected life. Perhaps that thought arises more from your resemblance to your father than from who I know you to be. It is by your choice that you remain vulnerable; it is by choice that you allow me to love you.

When I came home that evening and found your small drenched figure by my front door, your sneakers staining the verandah with mud, perhaps it was sheer desperation and inevitability. But I like to think that you chose to come to me.

You had a dark, smaller child huddled beside you on the porch, bleeding from beneath his clavicle. "This is Kabaji," you introduced swiftly. "He needs sutures. I had to cut his tracking device out of him."

The rain had darkened your hair to a deep gold. As I looked you over anxiously, checking for injury, for some sign of what had happened – you threw yourself into my arms.

The hug was fleeting, and you did not cry. I have never seen you weep or hesitate while there is still work to be done.

I took you to Hyoutei; and while the medics saw to your friend you told me the story. "The old man killed his parents," you said. "He found out that I had been online. Kabaji's parents didn't even _know_ I'd been using the chairs."

"They won't be the first persons to die for your sake. You should get used to the idea."

You shook your head. "I don't want to get used to it. That's why I'm _here_." Then, with a certain amount of disingenuity, as if you'd been thinking about it for sometime, "You won't die for me, will you?"

I said drily, "That rather depends. Does he know that you've been meeting me?"

"That's impossible. I made sure."

"You are remarkable," I told you, "but you're not yet what he is."

"I'm good _enough_," you said, smiling at me. Your smile is heartbreaking.

Your friend returned; you inspected his repaired wound and pronounced it satisfactory.

"There isn't much time," I warned.

"The old man moves pretty quick," you agreed. You proffered your hand and I took it, my thumb brushing against the creases of your palm. "You'll come and join us soon, right?"

"As soon as I think it safe." I could not have stayed away; in any case, I am constitutionally incapable of refusing you anything.

"All right, then. That's okay, right, Kabaji?" Even back then you were protective, careful; it was then that I knew you would not be your father.

But you were the only piece of him that I could keep; and I had you, now.

We went up to the flyers and I buckled the two of you into your seats. You stared out the window, at the streets below; and I remembered that this was your first time in the world.

"Where is this place?" you asked.

"Hyoutei," I said. "It belongs to me."

I nodded at the runner who was piloting your departure from the country; the engine rumbled to life, and I kissed you, not goodbye, but _au revoir_. It seemed like a long time before I saw you again. But it was not.


	12. Chapter 9

When Keigo awoke, he was lying on a couch with black upholstery and a rainbow palette of cushions. He sat up and saw that he was in a sunlit living room. There was an open window nearby; the sound of wild wind and absence of traffic noise suggested high altitude.

He stood and walked around. It was spacious for a Shin Tokyo apartment – the kitchenette, located opposite the balcony, was twice the size of Keigo's own. The floor was dappled marble and scattered with a colourful assortment of rugs.

He looked out the window. It was a dizzying drop to the street below, interrupted by a steady flow of luxury flyers about fifty meters beneath where Keigo was standing. The buildings immediately surrounding were a medley of flashing glass skyscrapers and retro-Georgian architecture. Somewhere inner city, then; probably a financial district.

There was the noise of a toilet flushing, and a moment later Keigo heard the familiar footfalls of Kabaji sounding in the passageway that opened up onto the dining area. The footsteps were soon accompanied by the emergence of Kabaji himself. When he saw Keigo he hesitated. Eventually Keigo bridged the distance between them, taking calm, deliberate steps.

"I'd like to know what you think you are doing," said Keigo. "Did Oshitari put you up to this?"

Kabaji looked uncomfortable, but he eventually admitted, "Yes."

Keigo waited. When that produced no response, he said, "I'm not in the mood for your awkward silences. _Speak_." There was no question of Kabaji's loyalty – and certainly none of Oshitari's, he and Shishido were both fundamentally deficient in the temperamental traits required for stabbing someone in the back.

That left the question of what hare-brained plan Oshitari had managed to come up with for saving Keigo's life from its precognised doom, and how they'd talked the usually-sensible Kabaji into going along with it.

"He'll be along in a minute," Kabaji said. "Please stay calm."

Keigo bit back his indignance at _Please stay calm_. Really, first Haginosuke, and now Oshitari and _Kabaji_... Shishido didn't count, he thought; Shishido would have jumped at the chance to knock Keigo unconscious.

The doorbell rang: a quick elegant vibraphone murmur. Kabaji looked relieved and moved to answer it.

"Wait," Keigo said, "who is that?" He reached out with telepathy, attempting to trace the psychic signature waiting outside, but for whatever reason, his own exhaustion or good shielding on the person's part, he could identify nothing.

Kabaji unbolted the tinted fibreglass door and swung it open. Sanada Genichirou entered the apartment.

He was armed, the trademark katana strapped to his back, a more unobtrusive plasma gun holstered at his right hip. His stance was ready for a fight, if necessary – then again, Sanada was _always_ prepared for a battle.

It didn't necessarily mean that he was interested in doing violence to Keigo's person. Particularly since the Rikkai vice-president seemed to be holding more cards than Keigo did, right now.

"Have you explained things to him?" Sanada asked Kabaji, who shook his head. "Okay, I'll do it."

And he bowed low to Keigo.

"I won't address by your proper title," said Sanada, "since you seemed to have abdicated all your proper responsibilities."

Coming from Ayana, the respect had just seemed natural; coming from Sanada Genichirou, it was – awkward. Keigo had to struggle to manage a supercilious posture. "Humph. You just don't believe at heart that I'm actually your social superior."

"I've always known," Sanada said. "I've known for years."

Kabaji moved to take hold of Keigo's arm, and guided him to a sofa, by way of suggesting, silently, that perhaps they had all better _sit down_. This had the advantage of giving Keigo a small space wherein he could gather his thoughts.

When they were all seated, he said, "I was given to understand that Rikkai had only just found out about my background."

"What Yukimura knows, "said Sanada, "isn't necessarily what _Rikkai_ knows."

Interesting. Sanada was implying that that the balance of power in Rikkai was more complicated than Keigo had previously thought. "Who leads Rikkai, you or Yukimura?"

"He does."

"And you're loyal?"

"I am."

"And you're withholding information from him. How are you withholding information from him, anyway? Last time I checked, he was a Precog and an Empath." Keigo thought about it a moment, and then the answer came to him. "Of course. You're using Kirihara."

Sanada shrugged.

"I think your definition of _loyal_ deserves its space in the dictionary all on its own," Keigo said drily. "Well, then, what do you want with me?"

Now Sanada looked annoyed. "For starters, for you to be less reckless with your life. Is it the usual Hyoutei procedure to simply ignore precognitive visions, even when the possible death of its president is involved?"

"To be blunt, it's not any of your business."

"Your life is everyone's business," said Sanada, "whether you like it or not."

"Are you speaking as a member of Rikkai here, or as a Sanada?"

"Neither. I'm speaking as myself."

Reluctantly, Keigo's eyes were drawn to Sanada. He'd always been oddly, powerfully drawn to the Rikkai vice-president – or perhaps not so oddly. Sanada Genichirou was a child of the Nippon imperial court, as Keigo would have been, had he not chosen otherwise. In other circumstances, they would have been close associates, even friends – or perhaps, rivals, in a very different sort of way from the present situation.

Neither Sakaki nor Keigo had ever been able to elucidate the specific circumstances under which a scion of the Sanada dynasty (a child of the main branch, at that) had come to be a founding member of the nation's most powerful syndicate. For a long time people had assumed that the group was under the direct control of Sanada's family – for all Keigo knew, it was still the current hypothesis among those not in runner circles.

It was just under two years ago that Jirou had first made Keigo aware of the VR entity self-identifying as 'Yukimura Seiichi'; shortly afterwards, the rest of the Rikkai leadership had corroborated Yukimura's claim to be the group's true leader. Unlike with the Sanadas, though, investigation had yielded no financial links between Rikkai and the political family known as the Yukimuras.

"Devastated as I am to disrupt an ideal that may be important to you, may I suggest that you avoid placing too much importance on my karyotype?" Keigo said. "I assure you that _I_ don't."

Sanada stood up. Startled by the sudden shift in mood, Keigo rose to his feet as well – but he was not prepared for the swift, brutal impact as Sanada backhanded him across the jaw. The pain was just beginning to set into his cheek when Sanada spoke: "Unacceptable. Is this how you've been cossetting yourself?"

Keigo had just opened his mouth, prepared to express sneering outrage, when it occurred to him that coming from Sanada Genichirou, the accusation wasn't as risible as it would have been on the lips of someone else.

He looked Sanada straight in the eyes. "I'm not being facetious. I honestly don't believe that who I am ought to have any bearing on the situation. I am aware, however, that it _does_."

The other boy looked tired. The situation could not have been much better at Rikkai this past week than it had been at Hyoutei.

Keigo asked, "Does Yukimura know that you've brought me here?"

"Not yet." Sanada looked awkward, then seemed to pull himself together. "Maybe we should have begun this discussion from a better starting point. Let me say now that I want to protect you if I can, whether from my family or from any other party who might have designs on the imperial succession."

"And what makes you think you can do that?"

Sanada folded his arms across his chest, and returned Keigo's gaze, evenly. Keigo gave up. No doubt Sanada _did_ have the resources to stop the fate that Oshitari had foreseen; Rikkai still had Niou Masaharu's powers, after all. The main question, really, was – "What will you get out of this?" Keigo asked.

"I want you to help Yukimura. There's something that he needs you for."

So this was ostensibly for Yukimura's sake, even when Yukimura himself wasn't aware of the sudden arrangement between certain members of Hyoutei and certain members of Rikkai. "What, exactly, would that involve?"

"I can't tell you that. You'll have to talk to him yourself."

"A bit difficult when he doesn't even know that I'm in your custody."

"If he needs to know," Sanada gave a grim smile, "I'll tell him."

Keigo wasn't entirely sure how to interpret that expression, and didn't want to linger on it."How did you convince my squadron leaders that they'd be better off placing me in _your_ capable hands?"

"I didn't. They came to me."

Keigo cast an accusing glance at Kabaji, who appeared to be meditating deeply and profoundly upon the swirls in the marble floor.

"Rest assured that we would have approached you ourselves if your team hadn't sought me out first. Niou and Renji told me about the risk to your life weeks ago." Sanada shrugged. "I think you can see why I feel some responsibility in this case."

"How do I know _you_ aren't going to turn me in yourself? It was your family that Oshitari saw in his vision."

He'd expected one of Sanada's usual glares, an ultimatum perhaps, but all that happened was that the other boy stepped forward and offered his right hand, palm-up.

"Try me," said Sanada. "I won't shield."

For what seemed like minutes all Keigo could do was stare at Sanada, dumbfounded.

"It's not a trap."

"I know _that_," Keigo snapped, mostly because he wasn't quite sure how else to react. "Let's face it, you'd have to have something like significant telepathic ability to be able to trap me this way, which you _don't_. Do you know exactly what you're offering? I could see _anything_."

"I don't have anything I need to hide." At the rise of Keigo's brows, Sanada added, "Not from you. Besides, this way will be faster."

Keigo was beginning to recall why he didn't like Sanada Genichirou very much.

He would have died rather than show hesitation in front of the Rikkai vice-president. It was this thought that kept his movement steady as he reached out for Sanada's hands.

Their fingers touched.

Keigo's eyes widened in shock. Weakness flared through his limbs.

He was only semi-aware of being caught by Sanada as he stumbled forward, of being hauled back towards the nearest couch, onto a heap of diamond-shaped cyan and magenta pillows. Sanada's grip on Keigo's shoulders remained painful, steadying; it was the last tactile sensation Keigo was aware of before the telepathic link between them strengthened, deepened.

Then thought and memory overtook them and the physical world might as well not have been there.

#

After about ten minutes had passed Keigo could no longer bear it. "Enough." He shoved at Sanada's chest with his left hand, severing the physical contact between them. "I don't want to see anymore."

They rearranged themselves at opposite ends of the sofa. Keigo's skin was flushed and warm, his pulse rapid and thrumming - a sympathetic reaction to the prolonged psionic contact. Sanada retained his usual outward calm, but he was very carefully not looking at Keigo.

They each waited for the other to speak first, initially without success. Kabaji watched them speculatively, but did not move.

Sanada's wristcomm sounded, emitting a series of pentatonic notes played on a zither. A text message; Sanada's glance at it was perfunctory. But it was enough to ease the tension.

"So. Nine years." Keigo felt his voice cut through the silence.

"It doesn't seem that long."

"Long enough to build Rikkai," Keigo said. He could feel in Sanada the same conflict that was in himself, the desire to flee from an intimacy that had been too quickly inflicted and deep.

Keigo had mindshared, before, though. Acting as if it hadn't happened - generally didn't help very much.

Particularly when you'd given away as many secrets as Sanada just had.

"You never guessed," said Sanada.

"I went to his funeral." Keigo didn't remember it all that clearly, to tell the truth; it was surprising how faded his childhood recollections had become. His first glimpse of a traditional church. Candles. White flowers. Stained-glass windows in the clerestory, pierced by sunlight. A polite and impersonal crowd of black-dressed figures, mostly relatives, or so the old man had assured him. His strongest memory of the occasion was an intensification of his dislike of the old man. (There had been no fear yet, not then. The fear had come when Kabaji was threatened, and the moment it'd occurred to him to be afraid he'd made the decision to run.)

"So did I. I saw you." They managed eye contact. Sanada's face was unreadable; Keigo strove to achieve the same effect. "You're still quite recognisable. You should have customised your face."

"I've always been quite attached to my cheekbones," Keigo remarked. He was rewarded with a hint of a smile. "Where is _he_ kept?"

"I can't tell you that." Sanada had been able to keep _that_ information secret, just now - _how_ Keigo had no idea. He'd hardly been able to tell where his own thoughts ended and Sanada's began, in that telepathic interlude

"I've been doing this with Yukimura for a long time," Sanada said. "It's the only way we can communicate outside VR."

"You weren't _reading_ my mind-"

"No. But I know how you think, now. And I felt you searching for Yukimura's location earlier."

Ah, crap. Keigo sighed. "I think we should work together, otherwise I'll have to kill you."

Sanada's mouth tightened. "You know what I want."

Neurotoxins. Locked-in syndrome; the shutdown of everything in the body except the conscious brain. _He only appears in VR._ Predictably, the old man was a bastard. He'd practically forced Yukimura's own family to kill him.

Although, judging from Sanada's memories, the euthanasia had failed spectacularly.

_You are terrifying,_ Keigo thought, _the both of you._

He'd always had Sakaki. Sanada and Yukimura had only each other.

That lone telepathic message of nine years ago, that had stood clear and apart in Sanada's mind, hard and sharply defined as memories rarely were: _My mother is going to kill me. Help me leave this place._

"Who do you want revenge against?" Keigo asked. "The Yukimuras? My sister? The old man?" He saw the frightening darkness that passed over Sanada's face and thought, _everything_. _The Nippon that could do this to him; you want it gone._.

Sanada, on the one hand, seeking change in the palace; Tezuka, on the other, seeking change in the streets. Keigo had never sought to remake Nippon like they did. Enough to live your best, he believed, enough to fight and take care of your own and reach the heights of the world in which you were placed.

His world was not going to stay still.

"And Yukimura? What does _he_ want?"

"More than I do," Sanada told him.

#

Eventually they got around to discussing Oshitari's premonitions of doom. Niou had seen the same vision months ago, naturally - "Back then there were too many variables influencing the outcome," Sanada said. "Renji and I thought it was best to wait until the right time to approach you."

"How do you plan to ensure my safety _now_?" Given that Sanada was confident enough to be offering protection... "Do you have that much influence over your family?"

"Even if I did - there was video footage taken of you during the InSec attack. Someone else would recognise you, even if it weren't my brother. You need to remain in Rikkai custody."

Keigo stiffened. "If they attack Hyoutei, looking for me - or _Sakaki_-"

"It's an interim measure until we decide where to move next."

...Keigo, too, had learned something earlier, about the Rikkai vice-president's thought processes. "You want me to turn myself in."

"At the right time, and to maximum advantage." Sanada produced an ebony infodevice from within his gabardine coat, then opened a holographic flowchart. "Renji made a diagram of Niou's predictions."

It was an impossibly complex diagram of lines and decision trees, outlined in white and navy blue and - wherever a negative outcome was noted - bright crimson. Desirable scenario endings glowed golden. In awe, Keigo skimmed the tiny serif text in the highlighted pathways. The sheer precognitive ability required to map out the future like that, to see not only what would (most probably) happen, but also what _could_ happen-

"Niou Masaharu is remarkable," Keigo said. He saved the file to his wristcomm, and would have said more, if not for the metallic resonant sound of the doorbell, ringing for the second time that afternoon.

Kabaji let in the newcomers, who proved to be Yanagi Renji and Inui Sadaharu.

The sight of a Seigaku leader immediately raised Keigo's hackles, but he was obliged to take his cues from Sanada, who was completely unperturbed. (Genuinely calm, not deliberately impassive like Sanada often was. Keigo was learning to tell the difference.)

"You took your time," Sanada said sharply, as the two made their way inside, taking seats opposite Sanada and Keigo.

"Some things cannot be rushed." As always, Yanagi Renji emanated composure, an air of detachment from the universe. "I think we've all met before?"

"It's been a long time since I met Atobe." Inui Sadaharu, who had already brought out his infodevice and stylus and had begun scribbling on the touchpad, now put it aside to shake hands with Keigo. "I hear that you've been through some very interesting developments in the last few weeks."

Keigo shot Sanada a wary look - Rikkai _hadn't_, surely, revealed either Yukimura's identity or Keigo's to Seigaku already?

"Stop fishing for information, Sadaharu," said Yanagi. "You don't happen to have any tea in this apartment, do you, Genichirou?"

"Somewhere, possibly-" Sanada replied - but Kabaji was already putting the kettle on to boil. Within minutes there was a willow-pattern pot of steeping jasmine sitting on the breakfast counter, and Kabaji was setting out little teacups on a lacquer tray.

"Very efficient," Inui murmured. "Do you get your squadron leaders to do housekeeping?"

Keigo snorted. "Hardly. If I told Shishido to vacuum the building, he'd probably finish by drawing graffiti on my wallpaper."

He studied Inui Sadaharu - it was the first time he'd gotten to see him up close outside VR. The Seigaku intelligence specialist was strikingly tall - about Ootori's height - and, like, Oshitari, affected spectacles that he did not need. His body language was difficult to read. Inui did not possess the elegant, subtly arrogant self-containment that belonged to Yanagi Renji - he was too deliberate, too conscious of himself and his environment - but he was nevertheless, in his cruder way, equally opaque to Keigo's perception.

"You can go back if you like," Yanagi told Sanada. "You may have to explain everything to Seiichi tonight - even Akaya's abilities only go so far. Better if you're there when it happens."

Sanada nodded. "I'll leave it to you, then." He touched Keigo's shoulder reassuringly, surprisingly - a press of the hand against the deltoids, too slow to be a pat - before letting himself out.

"Now," Yanagi said as the door clicked shut. "For the duration of this conversation you may regard my words as an accurate representation of Rikkai's current political position - _until_ we apprise Seiichi of the situation, which is a fairly significant 'until'."

"What doesn't Yukimura know yet?" asked Keigo.

"He doesn't know that Genichirou recognised you, years ago. And he doesn't know that we have been taking steps to keep the information from him ever since." Yanagi folded his hands in his lap. "There are reasons for this. Seiichi has more perspective now than he did when we were younger. If he had found out then, you would be dead."

Keigo knew, had seen it in Sanada's mind. "I hardly see how my survival is worth the trouble to you."

A thin smile. "That's what I said in the beginning. But Genichirou has a persistant feudal streak within him, and Masaharu informed us it would be easier to achieve our ends if you remained alive."

Keigo turned to Sadaharu, who was back to note-taking. "Have you been told of my circumstances yet?"

"Not in so many words. Renji has been skirting the point." Inui looked amused. "But I think he overdid it with the hints. You're the crown prince of Shinnihon, aren't you? Little-known except in the upper echelons of the elite, and even among those circles, presumed dead these last eight years."

Yanagi gave Inui a reproachful look. "I gave you as many hints as you needed, Sadaharu. No fewer."

"Is that so? Then I must endeavour not to be so underestimated by you in the future." Inui spoke good-humouredly. He had an association with Yanagi that predated the formation of Rikkai, although Keigo wasn't sure of the specifics.

"And Yukimura?" asked Keigo.

"He's been less generous with the clues there. All I am certain of is that Yukimura Seiichi is not the name he was born with, and that his identity is dangerous enough to be worth keeping a secret. Which, given _your_ secret-" Inui let his sentence trail meaningfully.

Keigo noted the warning in Yanagi's eyes and desisted. There was no sense in letting Seigaku know any more than they already did.

They had InSec on their side, after all.

Kabaji brought out the tea-tray. Yanagi took the teapot and white porcelain cups. "Sadaharu is here in an unofficial capacity, to advise us on current InSec policy" Yanagi told Keigo, as he began pouring out the strong fragrant liquid. "I think Sanada showed you the map that I drew earlier. It is vital that we reach an agreement with Seigaku if our goals are to be achieved."

Sanada had closed the file as soon as Inui entered the apartment. "You mean if _your_ goals are to be achieved."

"Make your choice, Atobe Keigo." There was no mistaking it; Yanagi Renji considered Keigo in terms of ally or obstacle; there was none of Sanada's cautious but genuine personal concern.

"I have." He'd made the decision the moment Sanada's emotions flowed through him. It was not Keigo's own fault, but – it was nevertheless his existence that had given rise to Yukimura's own birth, and destruction, and current pain. And…_I will not have anyone else die for my sake._

"I'll need to talk to Hyoutei," Keigo said. "Preferably this evening."

Yanagi inclined his head. "I can arrange that."

"Before that," said Inui, "you should hear what I have to say."

Keigo gathered his tea-cup carefully in one hand. "I'm listening."

"The first thing you should know is that InSec is eager to negotiate." Inui made reference to his infodevice as he spoke. "After the failed attack on St. Rudolph, they seemed to have realised that the cooperation of your syndicates is necessary, if we're to succeed at integrating the runners into mainstream society. The original conditions are negotiable."

Yanagi said, "There were a number of clauses we wanted altered with regard to juvenile criminal records and information privacy. I think you should have the Hyoutei squadron leaders look into those."

Ohtori was going to have his work cut out for him. "The contract details weren't the reason Rikkai and Hyoutei refused decriminalisation."

"With regard to your situation and Yukimura's," Inui paused delicately. "Only President Yamato or Director Tezuka Kuniharu would be able to provide a definitive answer."

Singularly unhelpful. "Can you arrange a meeting with them?"

"I'm trying. It's been very chaotic at Seigaku; our president Tezuka was discharged from medical care yesterday."

A small, involuntary thrill ran through Keigo's body. "Is he up-to-date with what has happened in the last week?"

"He knows. He wants to meet with you." Inui slid his black stylus back into its holder. "That is why I came here, to tell you this."


	13. Chapter 10

The master bedroom in the Rikkai safe house had been converted into a conference room, equipped with holoprojectors, multiple wall monitors, and even a neural link chair occupying what had once been the walk-in closet. The boardroom table was oblong with a walnut veneer. The accompanying high-back chairs had been designed for holoconference. Once the required configurations were made here and in Hyoutei headquarters, holograms of the individual team members would be projected onto each seat, so that attendees at both linked sites would enjoy the illusion that everyone was sitting together in a single room.

Yanagi walked them through the setup right before he and Inui left. It was straightforward technology – it took Keigo and Kabaji about fifteen minutes to make the arrangements. In the half-hour they had before the start of meeting they made short work of the delicatessen quiche that Yanagi had obligingly brought with him.

He'd been half-surprised that the Rikkai runners were so happy to leave him in the apartment unguarded. The bemusement had quickly vanished when Kabaji indicated that he was _not letting Keigo leave_.

Overpowering Kabaji in VR was easy; a physical fight was another thing.

Unexpectedly, his squadron leaders were all present and punctual. Holographic Jirou, sitting on his right, half-sprawled across the table and snoring. Holographic Hiyoshi Wakashi, seated stiffly at the opposite end, his face pathologically serious as ever.

The rest of them were unusually subdued. Keigo rarely called emergency meetings.

"We can start," he said. Ootori began to take minutes.

Keigo looked around at his team, at the leaders he'd worked with for the last six years, and savoured the sense of regret that came, let it wash over him. Then he spoke:

"I've decided to cooperate with the decriminalisation of Hyoutei."

Only Gakuto and Shishido were overtly surprised. Ootori and Oshitari looked pensive, Hiyoshi was calculating odds as usual, and as for Jirou – well, Jirou would have taken the announcement that an atomic bomb was falling on Shin Tokyo with equanimity and a snore.

Haginosuke was smiling.

Ootori spoke first. "Can you tell use what made you change your mind? While it's true that we never had a formal meeting to decide how we would respond to the Runner's Compliance Strategy, we were always led to believe that your position and Sakaki's were fixed."

"Two things." Ootori was perceptive, consummately courteous, a terrifying fighter both in and out of VR. He would have been the best candidate to take over Hyoutei, if not for the fact that Hiyoshi wanted it more. "Firstly, Sakaki and I were _not_ aware that this initiative had its origins in Internal Security. Nor did we realise that they had been working towards decriminalisation for the better part of a decade. In short, we underestimated the degree of political will behind this movement.

"Secondly, we thought we had a certain ally in Rikkai. After talking to Sanada and Renji, I've learnt that their positions are far more – nuanced, than we assumed. They're leaning towards accepting a modified agreement with InSec"

"Have you discussed this with Sakaki?" asked Shishido.

"I don't need to." He let them absorb that. He'd never let them feel it before, the degree of _real_ influence he had on Sakaki's decisions. "Secondly. I'm happy to allow decriminalisation, but I don't intend to be part of it." _It's not like I even have a citizenship record to criminalise or decriminalise._ "I will split Hyoutei into two. Those who want to stay in Nippon, will stay. Those who want to leave, will leave. Possibly to the Bundesrepublik, but more likely offplanet.

"I want to hear from each of you as to whether you can accept one of those choices. Remember that we can't all leave. One of you will have to replace me as president here."

"I'm going with you," Haginosuke drawled. He was draped lazily across his chair, and as he looked at Keigo (the holograms weren't quite good enough to manage eye contact) his smile was wide and brilliant.

Keigo's face softened. "I knew you would."

"Me too!" Jirou said, sitting upright all of a sudden; for a moment Keigo thought he was going to get up and bounce around and ruin his hologram, but he just tilted his head to one side and beamed. "Moving countries sounds like fun."

"Will moving even make any difference to you, given that you spend most of your time with link-cables in your skull?" Hiyoshi snorted. "I'll stay. Sorry Atobe, but I have no intention of following you halfway across the universe."

Keigo raised a brow. "Even if you wanted to follow me to the ends of the world, I wouldn't _let_ you." No doubt the lure of being in charge of the new Hyoutei was a factor in Hiyoshi's decision. Very well. Keigo would let him try.

"I will stay. I think the changes are a good thing. I – I'd like to help somehow if I can," Ootori said hesitantly.

That meant Shishido was staying, too, since the two were inseparable. Keigo felt a pang; he had not wanted to say goodbye to Shishido.

That left the paired leaders of the First Squadron. Oshitari and Gakuto were whispering, their heads bent together.

When they finally looked up, Oshitari's voice was colourless. "We need some time to think. May we have it?"

The thought that Oshitari might choose to remain in Nippon saddened Keigo more than he liked to admit, but he merely nodded curtly.

The rest of the Hyoutei runners would have to be informed and given the same choice, Keigo told them. Each leader was responsible for their own squadron. The sooner the better.

He considered telling them the truth about his identity, but dismissed it as sentimental and unnecessary. It would not change their upcoming duties and choices, and in many ways, it would be an unhelpful revelation.

#

Kabaji and Keigo stayed in the apartment overnight. Keigo's sleep was restless, punctuated by nightmares. He dreamed of the palace, with its manicured rock gardens and silent, graceful housemaids in kimonos and his father, precise and perfectionist and unnaturally young. He dreamed of space, of turning backflips in zero-gravity while Sakaki watched indulgently.

He dreamed of Yukimura, and came awake, breathing hard. He drifted back into a light, uneasy slumber, and when the morning light crept in between the slats of the vertical blinds, he did not feel rested.

Tezuka had agreed to visit this morning.

He had wondered several times in the last year whether he should visit Tezuka in VR. Not to apologise – Keigo did not regret the battle that had incapacitated the Seigaku president for the last twelve months – but just to see Tezuka, because he wanted to.

There were few people in the world who fascinated Keigo the way Tezuka Kunimitsu did. Discovering that Tezuka had worked undercover for the last six years, that he felt deeply enough about fighting crime to _live_ his adolescence as a runner, only compounded Keigo's interest.

These thoughts were on his mind as he awaited the arrival of the Seigaku president, and he found himself unexpectedly nervous when the intercom finally beeped to announce that Tezuka had reached the apartment.

Keigo let him in, and they shook hands.

The last time they'd met in person had been eighteen months ago. Tezuka had grown even taller since then, slim and long-legged and even a little awkward. The face and figure of a supermodel, but not the posture – he was simultaneously too athletic and too formal, he carried himself like a martial artist.

As always, Keigo thought Tezuka was beautiful, but resented having to look up at him.

"I'm glad to see you're out of hospital," he said, stepping back into the hallway. "Will the doctors let you go back to your usual work?"

"Six more months of neurophysiotherapy. Then they'll reassess." There was an uncertainty about Tezuka's body language as he took off his leather boots, entered the apartment. Keigo wondered what it signified.

They ended up standing at the kitchen counter, eating blood-oranges that Kabaji had peeled.

"I see that Hyoutei is cooperating with Rikkai now," Tezuka began.

Keigo interrupted: "I see that there's at least _some_ trust between you and Rikkai, since they disclosed my location to you."

Tezuka frowned. His hands stilled, halfway through dividing blood-orange slices with his thumbs. "They are holding something back from us. From you too."

"The truth about Yukimura." He said it as a test, to see what Tezuka knew.

"I have been told of Yukimura's identity."

Keigo studied Tezuka's face, looking for a hint of any giveaway emotion, but he would have had better luck getting Kabaji to make a public speech. "Then you know how volatile the situation is."

_A child of the imperial line poisoned by the Silver Emperor, euthanised by his own mother, abandoned by his father's house – and now in charge of Shinnihon's most powerful runner syndicate._ There was little chance that Yukimura's intentions towards the government were purely benign.

"Do you really think it's still worth working with him?" Keigo asked.

"My father is not without fault," Tezuka said.

An interesting position. Strictly speaking, Internal Security's duty to the collateral branches of the emperor's family was token at best. Legally Yukimura had no right to the throne, even though Keigo's sisters had continued to style themselves imperial princesses even after marriage.

If the old man had ordered Yukimura poisoned, even InSec had a duty to carry out his orders. That was the way Shinnihon worked. It had never been a true monarchy; since its founding the country had been a tyranny, subject to the preternaturally competent but autocratic rule of one man.

In theory InSec could have protected Yukimura all those years ago. Keigo knew, and Tezuka knew, that it _would_ not have done so.

"You're not the only person who feels guilty about this." Keigo leaned back against the kitchen wall. "We should at least be sure of what we're agreeing to before we discharge any perceived debts."

"Will you be participating in the restructuring?"

"I'm leaving the country."

"Ah."

"I have no intention of ever claiming the throne."

"My family will be disappointed."

"Really? From what I saw of your mother, she'd be all for democracy."

Tezuka did not evince surprise at the announcement that Keigo had met with Ayana before. "I do not think that we are ready for it."

And there was truth in that. Even a transition to a constitutional monarchy would be complicated for Shinnihon; Sakaki had just laughed in derision the one time Keigo had suggested it.

Then again, a transition to a rule under _anyone_ but the old man would be complicated for Shinnihon.

"Yukimura is probably aiming for revenge against my family," Keigo warned. He'd _seen_ it yesterday, Sanada's understanding of Yukimura, beautiful and tragic and helpless and powerful, simultaneously gentle and inhuman and hopelessly, irreversibly damaged.

Yukimura shared the Silver Emperor's blood. There was no one in their family who was not dangerous.

If Yukimura intended to wreak vengeance on the imperial line Keigo was happy to step aside and let him do it. Tezuka's priorities, however, were a little different.

"Are you loyal to the Crysanthemum Throne?" asked Keigo.

"My family is," Tezuka said, by way of an evasive and loaded answer.

"Then, what do you plan to do about Rikkai?"

Tezuka's eyes flickered downward. "We will see. Do you really intend to leave?"

"Is there any reason not to?"

"You could have a useful role here. Your skills would be needed."

"Turn Nippon into a democracy, the way you have cleaned out its runners," Keigo said, "and I'll think about it. Right now the only way I belong here is in a grave or on a throne."

"What will you do with Hyoutei if you are leaving?"

Keigo explained to him the proposed division of the syndicate. Tezuka made no comment. "I'm assuming that's acceptable to the Patrol and to InSec?"

"It will have to be," said Tezuka, in a resigned tone. "Remember that anyone who goes offshore with you without signing the compliance strategy will retain their criminal records, if they have one."

Keigo shrugged. "They'll sign. Just make it so that their slate can be wiped clean before they leave. Else no deal."

Tezuka looked amused, but assented. "I will arrange it with Inoue-san and Yamato."

"And your father? Is there any chance I could talk to him?"

He didn't miss the subtle transient shadow that passed across Tezuka's face. Interesting. "Must you?"

"Not to insult you, but I think it's pretty clear who's in charge of the decriminalisation movement here, and it's not Inoue or you."

If Tezuka found Keigo's choice of phrasing insulting, he didn't show it. "My father will be meeting Yukimura online today, just before lunchtime. If you like, I can bring you there."

Keigo smirked. _Now_ things were beginning to go somewhere.

#

There was only one neural-link chair in the apartment, and so it was decided that Tezuka should head back to Seigaku, with an agreement to meet at the Tennis Hub at a quarter to eleven. Keigo passed the morning in a fog of frustration and heady impatience. House arrest had imposed upon him a degree of idleness he was unused to.

_The work is probably piling up on my desk with each passing minute,_ he thought, _and Haginosuke had better not have created yet another interpersonal crisis with the Sixth Squadron because if our tech support breaks down at a time like this, I'll strangle him, I really will._

In the end his boredom got the better of him, and he jacked-in to the Net half an hour before the appointed time. VR was not one his preferred hobbies. It reminded him too much of the hours and days he'd spent training in his childhood, floating in digital spaces he could not control, forced to create order out of aberrant computerised shadows.

But that childhood had given him a mastery of the Net that went much further than even his squadron leaders realised. When Keigo entered the Tennis Hub, he did so under a cloak of anonymity that fewer than ten people in Shinnihon could have achieved.

_Although, that degree of anonymity is an identifier in itself,_ he thought, wandering through the main forum, which today had been transformed into an anachronistic Silk Road trading post: a caravanserai complete with virtual Mongolian horses drinking from stone troughs and non-human avatars in kaftans and veils, adjoining an open-air market that contained a token number of decorative spice and street food stalls but mostly consisted of genuine vendors dealing in information and security. There were not many runners here today, or at least few that were immediately identifiable as such. Given the volatility of the political situation, it was unlikely that many syndicates would be permitting their runners to appear anywhere as public as the Tennis Hub without a very good reason.

He passed the time reading newsfeeds. The Runner's Compliance Strategy was topping the trends in most Shinnihon threads and communities, although there was the expected unnatural silence regarding InSec's involvement in the issue. (Censorship agents hard at work as usual.)

When Tezuka logged on, Keigo felt it automatically, recognising a particular protocol favoured by the Seigaku neural network. He rapid-fired an instant message: _I'm here_.

Tezuka appeared in front of him, instantly and elegantly; Keigo was reminded that the Seigaku president had spent the last year confined to VR.

"Let's go," Keigo said. They were both using inanely generic avatars, selected from the default options the Tennis Hub offered when one logged on, and Keigo was impatient to go somewhere where he could talk to a Tezuka Kunimitsu who didn't look like a composite photo.

Tezuka private-messaged him the location of a neural network. They logged off the Tennis Hub and then onto the new location. There were multiple security clearance requirements at this hub, a few of which Keigo could have hacked easily. Some were harder. In all cases he waited for Tezuka to walk him through the correct protocols.

They arrived in an auto-generated space that came with the basic features and not much else. Blue sky, grey ground, a line marking the horizon on all sides. If desired, control panels appeared as virtual objects – oversized tablet infodevices floating in front of the user – but their default setting was invisible, subject to direct neural control. Keigo absorbed all this information in a matter of moments, then transformed the area into a space observation deck, complete with a view of a randomly generated star system and asteroid belt.

"Very nice."

The newcomer appeared next to the bulky telescope Keigo had placed at the centre of the deck. Keigo had felt his appearance a full second before hearing his words or seeing his figure. The stranger's VR abilities were not threatening.

To become Shinnihon's Director of Internal Security, one had to be threatening in other, equally significant ways.

"Thank you for being here, Kunimitsu." Tezuka Kuniharu smiled. It was an affable, paternal, even vulnerable smile. "You're the most reliable security I could think of, given the circumstances."

Tezuka bowed. He had deactivated the neuroconnection that linked his true emotions to his avatar's body language; as long as they were in VR, Keigo would not be able to identify what Tezuka was feeling.

"And you brought a most welcome visitor." It was Tezuka Kuniharu's turn to bow. "You go by the name Atobe Keigo, I believe. I've been hearing quite a lot about you, these last two days."

Kuniharu's avatar was finely formed, and matched the images Keigo had previously seen of the man. His face was attractive in a forgettable way; the same features that in Tezuka were refined to astonishing beauty, were present here in a muted and benign form.

Keigo said, "Then we are meeting here with the advantage of foreknowledge on both sides. An excellent pleasure."

"It is an honour to see you again, Your Highness." The emotion was honest, straight from the heart; Keigo could feel it in the space itself, not just in Kuniharu's avatar. His _telepathy_ felt it.

"I wish I could return the sentiment," he said.

"I see," Kuniharu sighed. "He hasn't succeeded in creating another heir, you know. Wouldn't you give it a try?"

Keigo paused, unsure for a moment. He'd been told by Sanada to leverage his identity at the right time and to maximum effect, without being told _what_ effect he was supposed to aim for.

On the other hand – recalling the holographic flowchart that he'd pored over last night before going to bed, too massive and divergent to be memorised – there was every chance that Rikkai had already figured out what 'to maximum advantage' meant, and it might not involve Keigo _knowing_ what role he played in the cause-and-effect chain of events.

The flow diagram had not been complete, either. Those golden, desired outcomes had been blank or, at best, terse in description.

He still had very little idea of what Rikkai considered a happy ending.

Keigo smiled, politely and artificially. "What makes you think he still wants an heir?"

"Oh, he does. Or rather," Kuniharu cocked his head, "in the absence of immortality, an heir seems like the least of possible evils to him. I have to say, right now I mostly agree with him. Some of us did consider a democracy movement, but _he's_ threatened to regard any attempts at political reform as high treason, which has dampened the ardour somewhat. Plus we've had our hands full with runner syndicates for ten years."

"Is the old m- my father behind the Runner's Compliance Strategy?"

"Your father," Kuniharu said thoughtfully, "has not been behind much in the way of strategy these last two years. It wasn't until this summer that it even occurred to him to tell InSec that you were possibly alive. And that was because the Sanadas were trying to convince him that their eldest son was a better fit for the succession than the Yamato boy."

"You're offering an awful lot of information," Keigo said, "when I haven't given you any."

Kuniharu shrugged, smiled. "That's the carrot, with promise of more if you behave. The stick is when I tell the Silver Emperor that I've found you and he tears the city apart until we have you in custody."


	14. Chapter 11

At that moment the space around them shifted.

The transformation was nuanced. The observatory with its backdrop of planets and void faded out. Fade in: a hothouse of flowers.

Keigo felt the tropical humidity, smelled green sap and magnolia and a tangle of culinary herbs. Their avatars were transplanted to a set of black wicker chairs surrounding a glass bistro table. Above their heads hung potted orchids, hooked to the crossbeams of a latticework trellis. Tiny white butterflies danced their way around the flowers, fluttering madly.

Yukimura was there.

He appeared as Keigo had seen him last, a young man in the first flush of adulthood, lean and poised. His jeans were stonewashed. The sleeves of his white herringbone shirt had been rolled up to above the elbow.

His eyes were hard and cerulean blue, and the smile he gave Tezuka Kuniharu was thin.

"You'll have to try a lot harder than that," Yukimura said, "if you expect to get an estimate of my VR capabilities."

For an instant Kuniharu's face lost its benevolence. Then he recovered, and his avatar relaxed and leaned back in its chair.

"How very remiss of me," he said genially. "Did I tell you eleven o'clock? I definitely meant five past eleven – Kunimitsu was meant to organise your security clearance at precisely that time."

The greenhouse darkened, as if the weather outside had suddenly turned cloudy. "Try being a little subtler," Yukimura suggested. "Or, if you're not any good at that, then be direct."

"Well, since I do so hate embarrassing myself..." Kuniharu folded his arms across his chest. "What do you want, so-called Yukimura Seiichi? You told me last night that you had terms and conditions you wanted to offer. Offer them now."

Yukimura restored the sunlight. His control of the VR space was delicate but absolute. Keigo was unable to manipulate a single detail of the scene they were placed in, apart from his own avatar. He began to fight it, attempted to wrest some measure of control over the subroutines governing this space, but the Rikkai president's next words stopped his attempt cold in its tracks:

"I want Rikkai's current assets to remain under Rikkai control, rather than being made a government holding or put up for public trade," Yukimura said. "I want a military position for Sanada Genichirou, higher than the one his brother currently holds. I want the state to sponsor tertiary and postgraduate education for all the Rikkai runners I nominate. And finally-" his gaze slid towards Atobe "-I want the Silver Emperor to arrange it so that Shinnihon converts to a republic upon his demise."

There was a stunned silence, into which Kuniharu coughed politely. "If we could perhaps work on the few demands you made that are remotely within the realms of possibility-"

"Either that," Yukimura's gaze turned to Keigo, "or you exile the Crown Prince and remove all records that he ever existed."

Privately Yukimura messaged Keigo: And you'd better thank Sanada for that modified clause, since he spent a most unpleasant evening yesterday convincing me that you should stay alive.

"As I said," the InSec Director frowned, "if we could stick to the demands that lie within the realm of possibility-"

Keigo shot a message back at Yukimura, I'd thank him, if I could recall asking for his assistance in that regard. Or yours, for that fact. Publicly, he said, "I don't see a problem with that. Once the Runner's Compliance Strategy is underway, I'll want to leave the country even more than Yukimura wants me gone."

"You put me in a difficult position," Kuniharu said finally. "Is there no way we can compromise on this?"

He directed his words at Keigo, not Yukimura, and it was then that Keigo realised, He doesn't know who Yukimura is yet. Tezuka hasn't told his father.

The InSec Director was treating Yukimura as an unknown quantity, albeit a potentially lethal one. His working assumption seems to be that Yukimura's a runner lord with unusual ambition and a streak of political idealism. He doesn't realise how personal this is for Yukimura. How much Rikkai is willing to do to overthrow the Shinnihon monarchy.

Tezuka's avatar calmly remained seated, quiet and inscrutable. If only Tezuka didn't have just enough Immunity to make attempts at reading his mind a concentrated hassle-

"There's a way." Yukimura held up his left hand. A lorikeet flew over from a hibiscus bush and perched on his knuckles, singing. "You can get rid of that useless loyalty to the Silver Emperor, and collaborate with us instead."

Abrruptly Kuniharu's eyes went wide, and Keigo knew that Yukimura was exerting his Empathic gifts. "I know you, you know," Yukimura continued conversationally, "You've never been happy with the way this country is. Your family doesn't understand like you do. Your son doesn't; he's too young to have seen the uprisings, the bloodbaths that followed revolts. Your father certainly doesn't – he's been loyal to the emperor since before this country existed. There's just you, and you've played along all your life. You sacrificed everything – your personal freedom, your son's childhood, your honour – just so you could clean up the streets of Nippon. Because you believed it was the only contribution you could make. But you're wrong. You can do more. You just have to take a chance."

Yukimura had to be crazy if he honestly thought this would work.

But Kuniharu was – pausing, as if he was actually thinking about things, and his reply, when it came out, had the brittle feel of a forced attempt to change the subject. "Full Immune protection from Ayana today, and still you can use your gift. You're most unusual."

"I've struggled against Immunes far stronger than your wife," Yukimura said. "Think carefully about my words. You do not want to make the wrong choice."

"The wrong choice, hmm? I see Kunimitsu and Yuudai-kun were mistaken." Kuniharu stared at his son with an expression Keigo couldn't decipher. "We can't negotiate with you."

"Really?" Yukimura said softly. "And you're prepared to fight us?"

"Are you prepared to fight us?" Kuniharu returned.

"We already have," Yukimura said. "We'll do it again."

A section of the greenhouse collapsed, and in an instant Tezuka's avatar disappeared from its seat and reappeared, standing, behind Tezuka Kuniharu.

"Oh come on, Tezuka, no need to pick sides," Yukimura reproached. Then, in a lower, deliberate tone: "On the other hand, you've only ever been on one side, isn't that right? If only you weren't so good."

"I suppose I should be grateful that he's inherited the family tendency to loyalty." Kuniharu continued to gaze ahead, keeping eye contact with Yukimura. "Unfortunately, he's also inherited Ayana's habit of being discreet to a fault. You're hiding something from me Kunimitsu. Perhaps several somethings. I'd like to know how long you can keep it up." Without waiting for an answer, he stood up and offered his hand. "If at any point you feel like offering more acceptable terms for negotiation, you know where to find me. As for you – Your Highness – you'll be hearing from me again. Soon." Kuniharu glanced up at his son.

The world blinked out.

He found himself back in his neural-link chair, staring at the login screen. So Tezuka had booted him from the VR space. Kuniharu wasn't good enough to do that. Tezuka hadn't been good enough to do that, a year ago.

Before he had time to decide his next move, the menus in front of him swirled away, and he was thrust into a long metallic tunnel, flying forward at rapid speed - the NL chair's way of demonstrating that it was connecting with a new hub.

He emerged into a high-ceilinged art gallery filled with pre-Raphaelite and Impressionist paintings. Like the greenhouse, the simulation was astonishingly detailed. Crown moulding and fluted pilasters adorned the white walls. Spotlights sat at strategic intervals, drawing the eye to the displayed masterworks. Rossetti, Millais, Monet, Manet. Very canonical.

Keigo tweaked his avatar until its controls matched his preferred settings, then said out loud, "I do prefer being able to look at my conversation partner when we're in VR together."

A marble bench rose up from the ground in a swirl of mist that dissipated to reveal Yukimura. He had taken on the child avatar that he was known for, but with alterations - the face thinner, less cherubic, more exotically beautiful. A familiar face, albeit one that Keigo had seen only twice, both times at funerals.

"You were in the coffin," Keigo said, the memory resurfacing. "You weren't breathing. How did he-?" It was a rhetorical question, but Yukimura answered.

"By bribing expensive doctors," said Yukimura. "And by digging. It could have been worse. I had to work very hard to plant the idea in my father's mind that he wanted a burial at all costs." The Rikkai president was leaking emotions Empathically, and Keigo did not like what he felt.

He changed the topic. "The next time you want to talk to me in private, an invitation will suffice. Or don't you think you've shown off enough yet?"

A shift in the flooring, and Keigo turned to see a second marble seat rising up with a soft sigh. He took the hint and sat down.

"It was a test. I can see it now; you're much better in VR than you let on. It was a great blow to me when I found out." Yukimura hugged his knees. He was barefoot, dressed in tan cargo pants and a hooded sweatshirt. "Atobe Keigo, the consummate performer. Atobe, who looks glorious, who is glorious. As strong as he appears to be. As clever as he appears to be. And then, Atobe Keigo, a prince who was offered a nation and rejected it to go wallow in petty causes."

"Hyoutei is not a petty cause." Keigo was angry now. He felt the provoking edge of Yukimura's Empathy, recognised it, chose to succumb to it anyway. The spotlights winked out one by one. He felt Yukimura's control of the virtual space; it was sure and expert, but it was not the only thing on Yukimura's mind, and therein lay Keigo's opening. He wrenched and the ceiling fell to dust. The paintings vanished.

The benches remained, and Yukimura was still sitting in the same position, arms locked around his knees. Yukimura let his head drop back. "Yes, you're too strong for both of us to remain. Stronger than I ever guessed. You'll have to leave."

"Presumably after we've made sure InSec doesn't beat Rikkai to a pulp?" He felt the heavy tug of responsiblity again, one he could not avoid feeling when it came to Yukimura. A world where you can live. I will make sure that you have it. Just as Sakaki created a world for me.

"We'll sort that before you leave. I did have a purpose in bringing you here." Gradually, Yukimura restored the lighting. The black crossbeams of the ceiling reformed. "I need you to distract your father. Your biological father, not your adoptive one."

Several questions occurred to Keigo all at once, but he only voiced three. "How distracted does he need to be? When, and for how long?"

"As distracted as possible, and as soon as possible. Ideally this afternoon.," Yukimura repopulated the walls with a new set of paintings, this time an eclectic mix of twenty-second century artwork. "As for how distracted – could you get him offline, if possible?"

"He's never offline." At the apex of Keigo's cranium, hidden by the parting of his hair, was a neural port that had been installed expressly for continuous wireless access to the Net. It was a device he rarely utilised, mostly because it reminded him so much of the old man. The Silver Emperor, who never stopped watching Nippon even in his sleep.

"As long as he's _paying less attention_ than he usually does," said Yukimura, "It'll be enough."

"What are you planning on doing?"

"If we succeed, you'll find out."

"If? I thought you had Niou Masaharu for that kind of thing."

Yukimura stretched out his legs on the marble bench, leaned back on his hands. "I'll tell you why Niou came to me," he said softly, gaze fixed at a point somewhere between his knees and his feet. "It's because I'm the only person whose future he's never been able to see. Even Kirihara he can see glimpses of, very rarely. But Niou has only ever had one vision of me. And that came to pass many years ago. So, you see, I don't know if I will be alive this time tomorrow. I have spent the last nine years not knowing if I would survive the next month, the next hour. Have you heard of Martin Luther?" Yukimura looked up and smiled. "Someone asked him once what he would do, if the world ended tomorrow. He said that he would plant a tree."

Keigo said: "I'll help you. But it'll take some time. I'll need to enlist Sakaki's help."

"He's already coming to your apartment as we speak." Yukimura stretched out a hand, and the entire art gallery began to shimmer and fade away. "Together with my best bodyguard."

#

When Sakaki entered the apartment he did so with the muzzle of a plasma gun pressed into the small of his back. Yagyuu Hiroshi followed right after, coolly gripping the aforementioned gun. Yagyuu's index finger rested lightly against the trigger.

Keigo took one glance at the situation and said, "If you don't put that back in its holster, I'll have Kabaji break both your thumbs."

Yagyuu, whose eyes held a blatant intelligence, looked at Kabaji – who was standing a couple of metres away, in the dining area: a compromise between appearing non-threatening (although a runner of Kabaji's size was inevitably threatening), and being close enough to intevene if the situation required it. There was a gleam in Yagyuu's expression, as if he were contemplating whether he was capable of breaking Kabaji's thumbs before Kabaji broke his own.

Sakaki didn't look worried, but that hardly meant anything. Tezuka Kunimitsu had nothing on Sakaki when it came to wearing a poker face.

"On second thought," Keigo said, "it looks like you'd find that prospect far too much fun. How about this, instead? You attempt to be civil, and I keep my word to Yukimura. Seems like a fair exchange to me."

"Atobe-kun. Don't waste your time with threats you don't intend to follow through." But Yagyuu holstered his gun. "I will cooperate with your wishes."

"Make sure that you do." Keigo stepped in closer to Sakaki, until their bodies were almost touching, and murmured, "I need to talk to you in private."

Now that the immediate threat was removed, Sakaki had relaxed minutely – enough for Keigo to see the tell-tale signs of unease on his face.

Keigo honestly wished he _could_ break Yagyuu Hiroshi's thumbs.

He drew Sakaki into one of the bedrooms, leaving Kabaji and Yagyuu out in the main living area. (He was fairly sure they could be trusted to not attack each other. Perhaps.)

"You've been busy," said Sakaki, as soon as the door clicked shut. "When were you planning on sending the memo?"

"About Hyoutei? Now would be a good time." They sat on the end of the single bed and Atobe outlined the proposal he'd made to his squadron leaders the evening before. "I'll leave with Haginosuke and Jirou as soon as the agreement with InSec and the Patrol is settled," he concluded. Kabaji was a given. "I was thinking Old Earth for now – you mentioned last month that you wished you had something like Hyoutei in Europe."

"I'll come with you."

He owed his life to Sakaki, but – _Father, you've always been too sentimental._ "You've got too much work to do here, and I don't trust Hiyoshi to lead the runners without supervision. I'm old enough not to need a legal guardian this time."

"I didn't say you needed looking after. I want to come." Sakaki frowned at Keigo. "We'll talk about this later. Right now I'd like to know why a Rikkai committee member interrupted my lunch with a plasma gun."

Keigo heaved a sigh and flopped back on the bed. "Where do I start?" The end was as good a place as any, he decided. "Yukimura and I have agreed that I'm to talk to the old man. If he can be persuaded to see me on short notice."

"How short?" asked Sakaki.

"This afternoon."

The bed shifted as Sakaki stood up. Keigo stared up at the ceiling. Sakaki said, "Are you absolutely sure you know what you're doing?"

"You're the one who suggested that I return." Not that Keigo had any intention of doing that. "Yes, I"m sure. Help me do this."

"If it's you he'll see you immediately."

"Good. Help me contact him, will you?' But Sakaki was already fingering the touchpad on his infodevice. Keigo shut his eyes. When he tried not to feel impatient he felt frightened instead, which was worse. _People dying. People dying because of me._

"I have someone I think you'd like to meet," said Sakaki into his infodevice. "When can I bring him? This afternoon? Yes. No. I'm sorry. You know that I do."

The call ended and Keigo sat up. "How did it go?" he asked. It was surprising – although it should not have been – to find that Sakaki still had a direct line to the Silver Emperor after all these years.

"Today," said Sakaki. "Right now, if you like."

"Does he know who you're bringing him?"

"He knows I know what he considers important," answered Sakaki, and that was the end of the conversation.

They went out and the four of them headed to the rooftop, led by Yagyuu. Kabaji's flyer was parked in the garage and after a moment's consideration Keigo decided that Sakaki should ride with Kabaji, while he himself sat in the Rikkai runner's flyer. His decision was validated when they took to the air and he felt the expert but reckless acceleration of Yagyuu's ascent..

They were close to the palace district and very soon reached an area where air-traffic controllers began signalling them, ordering their flyers to adhere to a set of premapped routes. Elsewhere in the city traffic laws were more relaxed, and flying vehicles went anywhere they liked, as long as they followed certain speed and safety regulations, but the density of traffic in central Shin Tokyo was such that mid-air collisions would have been frequent without the intervention of AI guidance.

Following a hive-stream of flyers, they passed over the zoological gardens and the national art gallery, then museum after museum – all places Keigo had visited, a lifetime ago. But he had little time now to engage in nostalgia.

_Distract the old man. Far easier said than done._. He would try, and it would have to be enough.

There were twelve official entry points into the palace complex. Attempt to fly in at an unauthorized point, over the outer walls, and the palace's security system would immediately kick in. Sixty seconds of voiced warning, then two minutes of taser beams. _Then_ the imperial guards showed up.

They entered by the main gate, Sakaki activating the retinal scanner at the gatepost, and stashed their vehicles at the top level of the multistorey hanging gardens that served as a parking area.

"Leave your weapons in here," Sakaki said. "We have three sets of security clearance to pass through."

Yagyuu looked annoyed about it, but voiced no protest. He and Kabaji locked their respective flyers and then the four of them took a massive, glass-walled lift down to the ground floor. A metal detector stood between them and the exit, accompanied by a trio of security guards. The tallest of them saluted Sakaki.

"We need you to sign in, Sakaki-sama," said the guard. "And your guests will need to register themselves on the system as well."

"Let me sign in first." Keigo stepped out of the elevator, emerging from behind Kabaji's back. "I'm already on the system."

Signing in on the imperial palace's visitors system involved first a retinal scan, then a thumbprint one, the two being required to match before the turnstile barring access to the gate would unlock. Keigo pressed his face to the scanner located right next to the turnstile. A moment later he thumbed the gel pad located just below it.

There was a pause, everyone watching Keigo in silence. Then the scanner flashed green, and Keigo passed through the metal detector.

For the first time in eight years, he was in the palace.

The other three followed him through. "That tall guard looked completely confused as you walked right in." Yagyuu commented. "I must say I'm mildly surprised that your access to the system is still functioning after all this time."

"You don't know the old man very well, then," Keigo said. "Let's hurry; he's waiting for us by now."

He took them, not to the main ceremonial building, nor to the Silver Emperor's residence, but to _his_ home, the small southern villa where he had spent his childhood. Down a long arbour of wisteria. Through a series of linked pavilions and the walkways in-between. Overdecorated building after overdecorated building, artificial pond after artificial pond. As they passed by the usual denizens of the palace they drew stares, although the majority of these were directed at Sakaki, whose visits to these grounds were rare these days. A few people, mostly palace servants, stared at Keigo and Kabaji with unusual scrutiny, but kept silent.

_That's the palace I know and love. All that well cultivated lack of curiosity._

Finally they drew near to the small well-kept garden where Keigo had spent thousands upon thousands of hours as a child – reading, studying, always doing something productive. Either following the timetable the emperor had mandated or finding some way to circumvent it.

As anticipated, their arrival was expected. The approach to the southern palace was winding and lined by large, moulting trees; it was in the shadow of one of these that Keigo halted and pointed to the liveried retinue that they saw surrounding the stone fountain in Keigo's old home.

"At least six people," Yagyuu noted, accurately. From their vantage point half a dozen figures could be distinguished in the gaps between the trees that intervened between where they stood and where the emperor's men waited.

"One Immune, one Telepath, one Empath, all at least level nine, one InSec representative, two members of the Silver Chrysanthemum Guard. That's the minimum he brings with him when he questions people," said Sakaki. There was tension in his shoulders as he walked.

When they were close enough to do a proper headcount they had to double Sakaki's figure. Five psionics (four huddled to one side, a fifth standing considerably further away), six Chrysanthemum Guards, a female member of the imperial household agency whom Keigo didn't recognise. Finally, the requisite InSec representative – in today's case, Yamato Yuudai.

All these personages were arranged in a concave half-circle facing the approaching visitors. At the center of them all was a young black-haired man dressed in tailored clothes. He was staring directly at Keigo.

Keigo returned the gaze and held it, came to a stop. "Hello," he said. He avoided saying Father. He avoided any number of insults. He very consciously avoided anything that would acknowledge any sort of relationship between himself and the man standing in front of him – parent to child, mentor to protege, ruler to vassal.

But the emperor did not look at him for long, quickly turning his attention to Sakaki. "Was it really necessary to do so much damage to his face? He no longer looks anything like the specifications."

"He still resembles you," Sakaki said, his voice low and vulnerable. Sakaki had _such_ bad taste in love interests. Hanamura had been one of the better-adjusted ones, now that Keigo thought about it.

"I'm ashamed of myself," said the Silver Emperor coolly. "I thought I knew you. That's incorrect. I _know_ that I know you. So what did I misjudge?"

"You know me." And Sakaki stepped forward and sank down onto his knees before the emperor. As always with Sakaki, it was a precise and graceful gesture.

"And you seem to think you know me." The emperor maintained his careful, unreadable inflection. "You think you'll be forgiven."

"Will I?"

"Stand up," the emperor instructed. Sakaki rose to his feet. The emperor raised his hand, clearly intending to strike.

Keigo did not even realise that he'd sprung forward, about to intervene, until he found his path blocked by a smiling Yamato Yuudai.

"Behave," said Yamato. "I'm the one who gets punished if I'm forced to hurt you."

His words had little effect on Keigo. However, the state-of-the-art plasma pistol he was aiming between Keigo's eyes was somewhat more potent.

Behind Yamato's back, Sakaki stood unmoving, head bowed. The emperor lowered his arm slowly – and then backhanded Sakaki on the cheek. It was a quick sharp odd movement, and neither its purpose nor effect was clear to Keigo until the emperor withdrew his arm and Keigo saw the glittering and crimson-stained signet ring on his father's middle finger. A moment later Sakaki turned his head towards Keigo, and the irregular and bloody gouge in his right cheek was revealed.

"Don't seek medical attention. I want you to let that scar," the emperor told Sakaki, Having said that, his attention shifted again – as if Sakaki no longer existed – back to Keigo. On cue, Yamato moved out of the way, lowering his weapon but keeping it in his hand, ready to intervene at a moment's notice.

"Why are you here?" the emperor asked Keigo. When he received no reply he elaborated. "Evidently you want something. Being passive-aggresive isn't going to make me more likely to give it to you."

Keigo said, "I came to kill you."

The emperor extracted a white silk handkerchief from the pocket of his double-breasted jacket and pressed it to Sakaki's cheek. "Not a very good lie. Try again."

Keigo felt the mental tickle that indicated someone was trying to penetrate his telepathic shields. He glared at the four psionics gathered in the corner. Two of them looked abashed, but the attempts did not subside. "I came to see if I _can_ kill you."

"Better. But still unsatisfactory." The emperor kept his fingers held flat against Sakaki's right cheek, his other hand resting lightly on Sakaki's shoulder. "I agree with you though. We should find an answer to that question, sooner or later. Do you have anything better to offer me?" Keigo did not. "Then we'll talk again over dinner." The emperor nodded at the guards. "Take them into custody."

Keigo was not doing nearly enough to distract the emperor, and there were no guarantees of a second chance. _Now, while he's still recovering from the surprise..._ "It wasn't a lie," he said. "I came because a precognitive told me that you were going to die soon. That I'd lose the chance to do it myself."

"That's impossible, Your Majesty," said one of the psionics, a slight, red-haired man of indeterminate age. "If there was any danger to your person we would have seen it?"

"Would you?" asked Keigo. He pointed at the pretty young psionic who was standing separately from the others, a familiar face from his childhood. "With _her_ around all the time? No doubt you're all impressively talented, but your powers only go so far with an Immune around." Although Immunity could be consciously exerted, it differed from the other psionic gifts in that it manifested itself continuously, even without deliberate effort on the wielder's part. Simply by ensuring that Meino Nanako was in his presence at all times, the Silver Emperor could guarantee himself a baseline level of protection from psionic attack.

"And yet you claim to know someone who _has_ seen my future," commented the emperor.

"You're more self-deluded than I thought, if you think you have a monopoly on Nippon's Level 8 and 9 psionics," said Keigo.

The blood flow had stopped; the emperor let go of Sakaki and let the soiled handkerchief fall to the garden path. He looked at Keigo and then behind Keigo, at Kabaji and Kagyuu. "You're buying time."

Keigo's heart sank.

Sure of the situation now, the Chysanthemum Guards surged forward, four of them carrying handcuffs.

He tried to think of another way to stall.

The pain came before he even had a chance to notice the movement behind him – the clean entry of a sharp narrow blade into his right side.

"My apologies for the inconvenience," said Yagyuu, pulling out the knife as Keigo fell to his knees.


	15. Chapter 12

"I think you've slept quite enough. I'd like you to wake up, please."

Keigo came awake all at once; there was no transition between sleep and alertness. Sharp pain thrummed in his right lower chest, most severe at the extremes of inhalation. He lifted his right hand and found it connected to an intravenous drip.

To his left, blinds were drawn back. Weak light filled the room, golden and dim. It was sunset, then – – but had it been mere hours since he was sedated, or was it longer still? Keigo struggled to a sitting position, assessing the situation.

"Your injury should be all but healed by now. Your noble sire spared no expense in requesting emergent medical care." It was Yamato Yuudai, sitting in a deck chair at the foot of Keigo's bed. "Nothing but the best for you, your Imperial Highness."

Yamato was angry. It was an expression Keigo had never seen him wear. Perhaps this was the real Yamato Yuudai, Keigo thought, behind the inscrutable smile and unfashionable sunglasses and pathetic VR ability.

"I appreciate the medical attention, if not the source from which it came." Keigo studied the Seigaku ex-president. "What's an honoured member of the august Yamato family doing babysitting a disinherited prince, by the way?"

"You have an interesting definition of the word _disinherited_. I'm an InSec operative and personal aide to Tezuka Kuniharu. You of all people should understand that being identified with one's family is not always a pleasant thing." Yamato leaned back in his chair. "I'm not here to babysit you, Atobe Keigo. I'm here to negotiate."

A fine time to negotiate, Keigo thought, when the other party was lying bedbound in the heart of the palace with a stab wound to his lung. "Who are you negotiating for?"

"For a family of people who are too honorable and foolish to negotiate for themselves."

"For Tezuka Kuniharu, then." When Yamato raised a brow, Keigo shrugged dismissively. "Oh come on, I haven't observed Seigaku for years for nothing. You're not Tezuka Kunimitsu's tool. He's yours."

"Kunimitsu is very...traditional. More like his grandfather than his father." Yamato gave a sigh. "In one respect, however, all three Tezukas are equally alike."

"Absolute loyalty, am I right? By which you mean absolute loyalty to the throne."

"My dear Keigo, if I weren't perfectly aware that your precognition stands no chance against my Immunity, I'd almost think you'd foreseen this conversation before. Truly your father's son, aren't you? He can read a mind better than any telepath, the Silver Emperor. It's been such an frustrating trait of his, for such a long time. He'd never have let me near you if he weren't so thoroughly distracted this time."

So Yukimura had made his move, finally. What had he done, and when had he done it?

"How long have I been asleep?" Keigo asked.

"Only a few hours, in which a great deal has happened. It was remiss of me not to recognise the potential in getting you and Yukimura to join forces."

A tingling pain ran down Keigo's limbs as he struggled to reach a sitting position, using the remote control at his side to tilt the head segment of the bed upwards. Being forced to lie horizontal made him feel helpless in front of the InSec operative. "You're the one who's been watching all this, aren't you? The one with both Precognition and Immunity talents. You're the reason InSec was able to take Hyoutei off guard the other day, with your attack on St. Rudolph. Didn't manage to surprise Rikkai, mind you."

Yamato smiled. "Are you attempting to provoke me? I do not inflate my own importance, Your Highness. Not like you. I know my talents well, and I use them to to the best of my abilities. Reminding me of my limitations doesn't threaten me."

It was a close contest, but Yamato Yuudai was perhaps the single most frustrating person Keigo had ever had to deal with. "Say what you have to say and get it over with."

"About that. I may have used a rather loose definition of the word _negotiate_." Yamato stood and began to pace the room slowly. "Do you know what Yukimura Seiichi has done tonight? He has shut down every major neural network and public server in Shinnihon; he has, in effect temporarily destroyed the internet. At this moment the emperor must feel that he has lost a sixth sense; to one such as him it must be like being blind, or deaf."

On second thought, Yukimura Seiichi was definitely the most frustrating person Keigo knew. No contest at all. "So that's the reason he needed the distraction."

Yamato frowned at Keigo, but a moment later his face cleared. "A distraction. That's why that Rikkai runner injured you. Threatening your life is certainly one of the few things that would distract the emperor. And Yukimura's actions now have provided an even more potent distraction. Tonight is the first night in my living memory that I have walked without fear of the emperor's eyes."

Keigo attempted to reply but was interrupted by the sudden advent of pain, exquisite and burning, in his head.

His precognitive senses _flashed_, suddenly, and he looked at Yamato, his head feeling sluggish and uncooperative as he forced himself to raise his eyes upwards.

"What have you done to me?"

Yamato smiled. "With the Shinnihon net disrupted, this infirmary is no longer under the emperor's observation." He held up a syringe of colourless liquid. "I won't tell you what this poison is called, Your Highness; its name is long and unpronounceable. Suffice to say it is a toxin closely related to the one my parents gave Yukimura Seiichi nine years ago, albeit somewhat more potent."

He moved towards the intravenous pole on Keigo's right and detached the normal saline bag hanging there. "I don't want you dead, you see. Kuniharu-sama is a stronger person than you, but he cannot escape being a Tezuka. His desire is to serve, not rule. I can give him an emperor he can serve without reservations, with the freedom to do what is right for our country. But it won't do to give him an emperor who can can rule by telepathy, or by virtual reality. In short, Your Highness, I don't need any of your higher cerebral functions. Alive, but incapacitated; that is the emperor that I need. That Kuniharu-sama needs."

Keigo tried to move his limbs to no avail. The tingling he had experienced earlier had now spread to his entire body. All his muscles were slack and unmoving, despite all attempts to force them into action.

"The drug that has been running into your veins for the last hour is a short-acting paralytic; it won't remain effective for long." Yamato inserted the end of the syringe into a plastic opening in the bag of normal saline, and began to inject the colourless drug. "If I were you, though, I wouldn't worry too much about the paralysis. Within fifteen minutes you won't have enough neural activity in your brain to be conscious of it."

Keigo attempted telepathic attack, lashing out with his mind, but his psionic abilities simply skidded off Yamato's Immune ability. Yamato raised a brow when he felt the attempt, but simply smiled and continued to administer the neurotoxin.

"I do apologise," said Yamato. "It may have been kinder to do this while you remained asleep. But I wanted the opportunity to talk to you, at least once-"

He was cut off midspeech by the flash of a plasma shot. A moment later, there was a thud as Yamato's body hit the ground.

Instinctively Keigo tried to turn his head, to find the source of the attack – only to find that he was unable to move his neck. His identity of the shooter was revealed almost immediately, however, as Tezuka Kunimitsu entered the room swiftly and yanked the intravenous drip out of Keigo's arm – cannula, plastic tubing, adhesive dressing, and all – creating a spill of blood and fluid that continued to dribble out of Keigo's arm.

"Use some gloves, will you? If Yagyuu were here he'd have a fit." Tezuka caught a pair of blue latex gloves and a pack of gauze sponges that came sailing through the air at him. A moment later Niou Masaharu came through the doorway, wearing a pair of gloves similar to the ones he'd just thrown at Tezuka.

The Rikkai runner trained his gun at the floor, on Yamato. "So you're the missing piece. You've been a thorn in my side since I first went to Yukimura, you bloody bastard. What'd you do with Yagyuu?"

Yamato sounded as if he was in pain as he replied: "Am I the person you should be questioning about this? Your partner is with the Silver Emperor, no doubt being tortured to within an inch of his life."

"He is not. The Silver Emperor's mobilising every armed force in the city and marching on Rikkai headquarters as we speak. I saw everything the moment it started. I even saw our pretty little prince over there, being turned into a vegetable. But I didn't see Yagyuu."

Yamato gave a gentle laugh, and pulled himself to his feet. There was a deep plasma burn beginning at his neck and extending to his lower torso, to go by his singed jacket and trousers. It was a wound suggestive of great skill on the part of the gunman, to inflict that much injury without killing instantly. Good to see Tezuka's ranged combat skills hadn't dulled one whit. "Perhaps he's not there for you to see."

"I know when Yagyuu dies." Niou's silver eyes bore into Yamato. "It's not today, and not now, and certainly not before I do. And your Immune Gift is even more damn annoying than Kirihara's. I wouldn't have made it here in time if it weren't for Yanagi."

Tezuka had finished applying a dressing to Keigo's arm and now turned towards the two of them. "President Yamato. I did not expect this to happen."

Yamato continued to retain remarkable composure as he stood, despite his wounds. "So it comes to this, Kunimitsu? I have never been able to predict you, anymore than you could predict me. So psychologically consistent, for the most part. And yet."

"It comes to this," Tezuka answered. "I made my choice."

Yamato bowed his head and then faced Tezuka again, expression serene. "I would rather it was you than any other. Please give my regards to your father."

"Wait," Niou snapped, "I haven't finished asking him about Yagyuu yet."

"Then you should have asked more quickly," Tezuka said, pulling out his own gun. "I would have this over and done with."

A single shot with a bullet, silent and straight through the heart, and Yamato dropped once more to the ground.

There was no hesitation in Tezuka as he went over to the fallen body. He knelt down beside it for about half a minute – disappearing from Keigo's field of vision – before rising again.

"Do you know how to reverse the paralytic?" Tezuka asked Niou.

"That's why I wanted to know where Yagyuu was; it wasn't sentiment. Give me a moment. It should be easier to find him now that Yamato isn't here." Niou sat down at the end of Keigo's bed and took a deep breath. "Bloody Immunes, I hate them. That includes you, Tezuka. Go over to the other side of the room, you're disrupting my vision." He went still for a few minutes, his eyes going distant and unreachable, before he finally said: "I can see him. You stay here to guard the prince; I'll bring Yagyuu back."

After Niou disappeared through the doorway Tezuka reached down and gathered Yamato's body up in his arms. He went out into the corridor and came back again several moments later, no doubt having placed Yamato in one of the other infirmary rooms.

Tezuka pulled the sole chair over to sit by Keigo's bedside.

_How did you get here?_ Keigo asked telepathically. He had to repeat his words twice, as initially he was unable to penetrate Tezuka's Immune barrier. Tezuka noticed Keigo trying to make contact, however, and redirected his Immune ability, so that the channels of psionic communication were suddenly open.

_Fuji, at first. He warned me that I would regret it if I did not come here tonight._ Tezuka's mind was guarded, as always; he left no stray thoughts for Keigo to read. _Niou intercepted me as I was entering the palace._

_Do you regret coming here tonight?_

_I do, and I do not. I do not regret protecting you. You, not the throne._

Taciturn and meaningful as always. _Did you think it would come to this with Yamato?_

_I did not. But I was prepared. There is no one in Shinnihon less predictable than Yamato was._

_He was completely loyal to your father._

_He was. But my father did not ask him to do this._

_You're sure about that?_

_I am certain. My father is many things, but he is first and foremost loyal._

Keigo cut the telepathic connection, brooding. It was one thing to be hounded by InSec and Rikkai and get tangled up in the imperial politics of his childhood. It was another thing to have Tezuka Kunimitsu – _defending_ him. Killing in his name.

He wanted things to be as they were, runner president to runner president. The pure fight, the ephemeral battle.

It was not a life that would have lasted. Sakaki had warned him from the beginning that his days in Hyoutei were numbered.

"You are who you are," Tezuka said quietly. "And I am who I am. That does not change."

_I didn't think you were an Empath._

_I am scarcely anything like Yukimura. But you are as psychologically consistent as Yamato claimed me to be. I have made my choice; will you make yours?_

Keigo was about to retort that he already _had_ made his choice, when Niou returned, followed by Yagyuu.

"Found him trapped in one of the dungeon's neural-link chairs," Niou informed them. "VR torture chamber. Meino Nanako stuck an Immune barrier on him, that's why I couldn't find him, especially with two other Immunes in the vicinity."

There were no visible marks of injury on Yagyuu. There never were; the old man preferred psychological scars to physical ones. Yagyuu's face was opaque as he silently wound a tourniquet around Keigo's left arm, established intravenous access, and injected a white substance into a vein on the inside of Keigo's elbow.

Within minutes Keigo was moving his limbs once more. He pulled himself upwards, allowing himself a wince at the pain that persisted in his chest.

"Thank you," he told Yagyuu. "For the medical care, not for stabbing me."

Yagyuu bowed his head in acknowledgement. "It was necessary."

"And enjoyable, no doubt."

"It is always a pleasure to do my duty," said Yagyuu. His tone was polite, but his face remained expressionless. "Niou-kun and I will be taking our leave now. The two of us have futher work to do."

"As do we," said Tezuka. "You will be taking us with you."

Yagyuu raised a brow, but he did not say no. Instead he glanced at Niou, who was studying Atobe and Tezuka with a thoughtful expression.

"Yes," he said finally, his silver eyes inscrutable. "You can both come. It's part of the future."

"Which future?" Keigo couldn't help asking.

"One that works."

#

The Shinnihon Stock Exchange was down. All major news sites were down, as were any social networks worth mentioning. Fifteen of the country's eighteen major banks were at a standstill, their accounts frozen. Traffic lights, telecommunications systems, television channels – everything was down.

The only major systems Yukimura had been unable to attack, according to Niou, were InSec, the military, and the palace.

The old man had acted swiftly the moment he realised what was going on. Within half an hour of Yukimura's attack, the Rikkai headquarters had been reduced to rubble.

"We knew that was going to happen, of course," said Yagyuu. "Everything of importance was relocated days ago."

"Including Yukimura's body?" Keigo asked. Transporting a paralysed teenager had to be a difficult task, even for a syndicate of Rikkai's size.

Yagyuu adjusted his glasses. "Including President Yukimura, yes."

Keigo frowned at him. "Where is Yukimura now?"

"Would we tell you," Yagyuu said, "even if we knew?"

Yagyuu's voice was a fraction more irritated than might be expected, causing Keigo to scrutinise the Rikkai runners before smirking in realisation. "You really _don't_ know where Yukimura is, do you. I suppose that's the extent of how much he trusts the two of you."

A hint of anger passed across Niou's face, but it was Yagyuu who responded: "Yukimura-kun did not stay alive all these years by being careless. Tonight would be a poor time to start."

That brought the discussion to a stalemate, and although Keigo would have liked to supply another rejoinder, there were priorities of greater urgency at hand. They set about securing the upper floors of the infirmary. The place was largely abandoned, Yamato having apparently evacuated the doctors and nursing staff before he came to visit Keigo. Yagyuu bolted down the doors and windows, while Niou found the security system and armed it, disconnecting it from the main palace system.

Keigo found his belongings, including his wristcomm, infodevice, and his weapons, locked away in one of the medication cabinets. (The door clicked open when he thumbed the sensor-lock; even after all these years, his security clearance remained intact.)

Once the basic cautionary measures had been attended to, the four of them gathered to discuss strategy.

"Our flyers are parked outside the palace complex," Niou said, referring to his own vehicle and Tezuka's.. "It wasn't too hard getting in, thanks to our scion of House Tezuka having security clearance, but the Chrysanthemum Guard will have regrouped and organised themselves by now. If we try to leave this building without a very good plan in place, we'll be arrested within minutes."

"We need as much information as we can before coming up with a strategy." Tezuka glanced at Niou. "Are you able to use your precognition to gauge what hostile forces will be in the area if we emerge?"

"I could, but it'll be difficult. I'm getting about three spontaneous visions a minute at the moment, which is twice the usual rate. I can still function, but directing my sight to a specific task is pretty damn difficult."

"If I could interject," Yagyuu nodded at Keigo. "Niou-kun is not the only person here with precognitive ability."

There was something immensely annoying about Yagyuu Hiroshi, somehow, even discounting the fact that he'd punctured Keigo's right lung mere hours ago. "If what we want is information on the palace's armed forces, there's easier ways to get what we need. Nothing happens in this place without a real-time electronic record of it happening; every servant and guard is microchipped."

Even now he recalled fumbling with the laser scalpel as he tried to locate Kabaji's microchip, the day the two of them ran away; it'd been embedded deeper than either of them had assumed and it hadn't stopped bleeding for what was about ten minutes but felt like hours and dozens of tissues.

Tezuka said: "I doubt I could successfully infiltrate the palace neural networks."

"I never said I expected you to be able to," Keigo retorted. "I'm planning to sit on that chair by the window over there. I suggest that none of you interrupt me for the next five minutes."

Keigo had been designed for this, from test-tube conception to artificial birth.

He hadn't done this in eight years. He'd never done it except under the most supervised and controlled of situations, the old man holding his hand both physically and virtually. Even he hadn't enjoyed it except as a challenge. Partition your mind, the Emperor had said. Pay attention to what you are doing online, as well as the world around you.

He'd never quite managed this feat of multitasking. Even now, he had to lay back on the couch and close his eyes, in order to activate the long-dormant implants at the back of his skull.

All of a sudden he was aware, in a non-sensory manner, of multiple wireless networks existing all around him, primed for connection.

Niou said, "Is that-"

Yagyuu answered: "Yes. Wireless human-neural network interaction. This is the first time I've seen someone besides Yukimura-kun engage in it."

Keigo blocked Niou and Yagyuu's voices out of his mind, along with all awareness of his physical surroundings. His determination not to be like the old man had its downsides, and one of them was that he'd never, truly, master the art of interacting with neural networks. It was taking all his concentration just to connect to the palace's main Hub, bypassing level after level of security clearance-

He activated another of his rarely-used implants and immediately he was within a VR interface, all evidence of the external world gone.

He sat on a throne in a pale, glittering room of crystal. His wrists were cuffed to the armrests, his legs shackled to the floor in translucent ice chains. A dozen giant marble vases lined the sides of the room, each vase holding an oversized, metallic chrysanthemum.

It was not the scene Keigo had been expecting to see, and although he grasped the situation instantly, it was too late for a response.

"You took your time," said the old man, just as Keigo attempted to logoff and discovered that he was, unsurprisingly, trapped.

#

In some ways, he'd been waiting for this all his life.

He gazed across at the avatar of the man who'd sired him, created him. The Silver Emperor appeared in VR much as he did in the physical world: young, perfectly proportioned, with a sculpted look about his slim figure that reinforced the sense that one was looking at something inhuman. With respect to his features, the genetic link between him and Keigo was unmistakable – it was in the eyes, the nose, the jaw. The plastic surgery Keigo had undergone eight years ago had not been radical enough to diminish the resemblance significantly.

Keigo thought for a long while, and then he spoke: "Hello, Father."

"Hello Keigo," said the emperor. "I see your VR capacities have improved only minimally."

"It was not one of my goals to improve them." Even as he spoke, Keigo tested out the programming of the space they were in – the emperor had Admin status, Keigo only had Guest, but even so Keigo had a few tricks up his sleeve remaining, particularly if the Palace network's encryption protocols were the same as they'd been when he was living here...

He stood up, and the frozen chains and throne and dais dissipated into dust around him.

"I suppose it could be worse; at least you have not grown rusty." The emperor raised his left hand and snapped his fingers; immediately they were seated at a round silver table, facing each other. "I wish I could say the same of your political sense, but it's evident that Aya's boy has been thinking circles around you."

Keigo gave his father a scathing look. "Who do you think I am? Sakaki? You were as surprised by Yukimura's movements as I was."

"Speaking of Sakaki, once I was informed of your presence in this city I investigated and found old footage of the two of you travelling in the Neue Bundesrepublik five years ago. You've been calling him your father. He must enjoy that, sentimentalist that he is."

"What have you done to him?"

His father raised a brow. "Sakaki is safe. What do you take me for?"

"A total bastard, last time I checked."

"Hardly true in the technical sense. My life began in a laboratory, just as yours did. Unlike you, however, I had no parents." The room around them flashed and shifted till they were standing amid a sea of chrysanthemums: long-stemmed, gigantic and colourful, their sweet scent heavy in the air.

The emperor continued: "You misjudge me greatly if you think I would harm Sakaki. Cruelty is only warranted when it can be expected to affect future outcomes. Sakaki's role in our game is over; he will not be of further help nor hindrance to you and me, whether I punish him or not."

"It's not a game."

"For you it isn't, I expect. At the age of seventeen everything is life and death and non-negotiable. You and the Yukimura child are perfectly the same in that respect."

"You poisoned Yukimura. It would have been better to kill him."

"Hindsight is perfect. The boy is made of sterner stuff than Aya is. Had I known this back then, I would simply have eliminated him. Still, by all indications he's got the same emotional instability as his mother. I have need of you yet."

Even after years of separation they still understood each other perfectly, him and the old man. "I've made it very clear I don't want to be part of your plans for Shinnihon," said Keigo, scowling.

"You have expressed your objections on numerous occasions and in manifold ways. To which I say: what a shame. Do you think you will escape this, Keigo?"

"Escape living a life like yours? I think I can manage to do that."

The chrysanthemums grew taller, heavier, stronger-smelling; the flowers and stems and leaves rose up into a great forest that loomed all around their avatars.

"My life has been an interesting one," said the emperor. "I spent its first century founding a nation. Its second century I spent seeking immortality in any form: literal, metaphorical, spiritual. These last hundred years I must say have been most unproductive. Still, I can't say I ever imagined your being able to emulate my path. Even if you wanted to, as clearly you do not."

_I know_, Keigo thought. _I know you are old and clever, and that if I managed to hide from you these last eight years, it is because you allowed it. I know you don't need Precognition to see everything that could happen and will happen. But that is part of the reason I ran away._

Aloud, he said, "What do you have planned for Yukimura Seiichi?"

There was a wild whining wind, a darkening of the sky. The chrysanthemums began to wilt. They fell in their tens of thousands, petals indigo and scarlet and yellow, a snowstorm of fragrance and color. Keigo stared at his father's avatar amid a landscape of destruction, unholy in its beauty.

Then sudden silence, although the flowers continued to fall. The emperor said: "His existence and mine are utterly incompatible."

Keigo's breath hitched. The old man's words weren't exactly surprising, but still - "Leave me out of it," he said harshly. "I'm not interested in the family games."

"You never were part of the family games, Keigo." The rain of petals was slowing; the ground beneath their feet was a boundless carpet of withered chrysanthemum. "Did I ever involve you in the internal politics of the palace while you lived here? I think I did my best to spare you that."

"And yet here I am," said Keigo. "Neck-deep in your schemes and Yukimura's."

His father's voice gentled. "Keigo, I am sorry."

The sky shining above them, silver clouds haloed by the illumination of a virtual sun. Birdsong, soft breezes, young greenery emerging from the death of the earlier forest. Keigo scented damp grass, felt the warmth of sunlight on his skin, sensed the delicate perfection of the VR landscape. Absolute control; every aspect of the virtual space fine-tuned.

"He is coming," said the emperor.

The entire scene disappeared. Keigo was back in a world of featureless grey - disembodied, unseeing. He reached for his neural controls and flipped through menus, subroutines, protocols. What he discovered made his head spin.

The emperor remained online, although he was no longer directly communicating with Keigo. But there was another user logged on to the Hub, someone whose identity remained hidden.

Someone who possessed Admin status on the palace's main neural network.

Someone who, like Keigo and the Silver Emperor, was connecting wirelessly to the palace Hub.

#

The first thing he saw as he came back to the offline world was Niou's eyes, silver and intent.

"Yukimura's here," said Keigo. "In the palace." Within reach of the Palace's wireless range.

"I know," said Niou. Across the room, Tezuka and Yagyuu were unholstering their weapons.

#

Tezuka forced them to set their guns to non-lethal taser, making it clear that he would act to neutralise anyone who did not cooperate. Niou acquiesced with a shrug. Yagyuu perhaps seethed a little, but agreed without too much dissension. The fact of the matter was that there was no time to lose.

As it turned out they did not meet with much hostile resistance as they emerged from the infirmary. All across the compound and the Palace gardens a cacophony of sirens were blaring, declaring an internal emergency of the highest level. Spilling across every footpath were panicked bevies of concubines, cooks, ministers, cleaners, valets, diplomats, IT personnel, secretaries, ladies' maids, LAFV mechanics, courtiers - some of them on foot, some of them taking to the air in LAFVs, all of them disorganised and haphazard and terrified. There were armed forces in plentiful supply, true - Chrysanthemum Guards, and military, and even some uniformed InSec employees - but they had their hands full ushering the palace civilians into some semblance of order.

Niou took the lead, proceeding cautiously at first, following hidden walkways and secluded colonnades. When no guards emerged to block their passage, they grew bolder, hastening their pace and barely pausing to scout as they turned corners and crossed open areas. Keigo presumed that Niou's Precognition was more than adequate to foresee any nasty surprises that might have come their way.

Within minutes they were at the great courtyard that led to the main palace. There were fifteen entrances to the building; Keigo knew every last one of them intimately.

"The eastern wing's servant quarters," he suggested, as they gathered in the shadow of a pavilion, still a good hundred yards from the palace building itself. "We can get fairly close to the side doors there without being spotted, and it's less likely to be heavily guarded."

"Unnecessary," said Niou. Unlike any other Precog Keigo knew, Niou appeared to have the capacity to absorb visions without getting distracted from whatever he was doing at the time, whether it was fighting or scouting or holding a conversation. "Yukimura's beaten us to it."

And with those words Niou and Yagyuu began walking across the courtyard, side-by-side. Pistols held at the ready, in Niou's left hand, in Yagyuu's right hand, but with an aura of calm about their movements, as if they did not expect to be using their weapons.

Keigo held his breath, watching them. But no gunshots rang out, no Chrysanthemum Guards appeared. There was no movement at all.

After the pair had travelled about fifty paces Niou turned to look back at where Keigo and Tezuka were still waiting by the pavilion. "Are you coming or not?" he called out, tone impatient.

"It appears that whatever has happened, the main palace security has been neutralised," said Tezuka quietly. Tezuka's facial expressions were always subtle at best, but reading between the lines Keigo could see that he was as surprised as Keigo felt. Rikkai might be the most powerful runner group in Nippon, but no syndicate was a match for the full Chrysanthemum Guard under ordinary conditions.

How many further sorceries was Yukimura Seiichi going to perform tonight?

He stood up with Tezuka and they crossed the flagstones to join the two Rikkai runners. Caution still ruled Keigo's movements; he studied the moonlit courtyard and the palace walls, scrutinised the parapets and the balconies, but found nothing. No sentries, no snipers, not even surveillance insects.

It was not until they reached the wide stairway leading to the main doors that they caught their first glimpse of Chrysanthemum Guards.

There were a dozen of them, all fallen, some of them prone on the floor, some of them slumped against the balustrades. At first Keigo thought they were dead, but then one snored, and upon reevaluation he realised that they were all still breathing. A few of them sported plasma burns, and singed uniforms, but the majority of them bore no signs of physical injury.

Keigo knelt down to examine one of the guards. This particular woman lay supine on the tiles of the entrance portico, her breaths quick and shallow, her eyes staring glassily into space. Keigo placed his fingers to her neck and found her pulse rapid, thready, uncertain.

"This is Yukimura's work, is it not?" Tezuka asked Yagyuu and Niou.

"The injured ones would be Kirihara-kun and Jackal-kun," answered Yagyuu. "But yes, the rest would be Yukimura-kun."

The entrance hallway was in the same condition, silent bodies scattered across the carpets. Inside the building high-pitched sirens were blaring, sometimes interrupted by urgent voice recordings instructing civilians to evacuate. In the upper corners of rooms, near the ceiling, security cameras rotated back and forth. But no matter where they went inside the palace it was the same, every chamber and corridor empty save for the deeply unconscious figures of guards, servants, courtiers.

"Where should we go?" Tezuka asked Niou, as they halted at an intersection of passageways, faced with a three-way choice of possibilities.

Niou's face was hectic with excitement. "Yagyuu, I can _see_ him," he said, his voice betraying a boyish wonder that Keigo would never have expected from the Rikkai precognitive. "I can see him. It's been so _long_-" He caught himself mid-sentence, and turned to Keigo and Tezuka. "The throne room. That's where we need to go."

"I know the way," said Keigo. "I'll take you there."

He stepped forward, following the corridors that after all this time remained utterly familiar.

For better or worse, at long last.

#

The doors to the throne room had been torn off their hinges.

More precisely, they had been burnt off their hinges. The doorway's lintel was charred, and across the floor lay great scorched chunks of painted hardwood. Ash and smoke drifted through the air.

Marui Bunta's pyrokinesis, without a doubt.

Taking cover at the edge of the destroyed entranceway, they peered through at the tableau of wreckage that was the throne room.

The Rikkai runners had taken up position close to the doorway. Shielded by an invisible telekinetic barrier, they were launching attacks with their usual coordinated efficiency. There were only half a dozen of them, five of whom Keigo recognised. Sanada. Kirihara. Yanagi. Marui. Jackal.

The sixth sat in a wheelchair, a skeletal figure in a hospital gown. Hair sparse and clipped short, eyes hidden behind tinted sunglasses. His limbs were horrifyingly thin, pallid skin stretched over bone.

Yukimura Seiichi.

Fire flared; shots rang out near continuously. Sanada and Yanagi continued to aim in the direction of the throne - Sanada fired rapid bursts of bullets, Yanagi sent out thin curving plasma arcs that shone brilliantly, then dissipated into nothing as they neared the throne. The emperor's cohort was guarded by its own impenetrable telekinetic barrier.

Because it was impossible to get an good view of the imperial dais without risking being caught by a stray plasma shot, Keigo and the others could only catch imperfect glimpses of the men and women protecting the throne. There were about fifteen of them, defended by a combination of physical barriers and psionic shields. Some wore the silver-trimmed uniform of the imperial psionics. The rest were a mix of Chrysanthemum Guards and InSec personnel.

Behind them all sat the old man on his throne. Calm as ever. Watching the carnage unfold.

"Kirihara-kun tires," said Yagyuu.

They looked over at Kirihara Akaya, who sat crumpled in a corner on the floor, face white, black hair matted, brow furrowed in tight fury. The left side and sleeve of his jacket were soaked through with blood.

Niou asked quietly, "How long do you think it'll be until he passes out?"

"Stamina is not his strong point." Even as Yagyuu spoke, they saw Kirihara's head sag in exhaustion. The young Immune screwed his green eyes shut for a moment, before opening them again, his mouth set in harsh determination "Jackal-kun can likely keep the telekinetic shields up indefinitely, but I doubt that we can rely on Kirihara-kun's Immunity for much longer. Ten minutes, most likely."

The fight between Rikkai and the Silver Chrysanthemum was in equilibrium at present. Sanada and Yanagi managed shot after futile shot; Marui Bunta flung wall after wall of fire across the throneroom, only to to have the flames blink out the moment they hit a certain point in the air. The attacks of the imperial operatives were similarly ineffectual. Rikkai's only defenses might be Jackal Kuwahara's telekinetic shields and Kirihara's Immunity, but this was more than sufficient to keep the six runners unscathed - as long as Kirihara and Jackal remained fit for combat.

"We need to create an opening," said Yagyuu. "A small one would be sufficient for Yukimura-kun."

Niou did not answer. Instead he stared across at the other Rikkai runners.

To all but the most careful observer there was no sign that the Rikkai combatants had noticed the arrival of their allies. (Allies and interested parties, rather; Keigo very much doubted Tezuka would assist Rikkai in a fight against the Chrysanthemum Throne. For a moment he wondered at all what Tezuka's aim was in coming here to begin with - and then he realised that Tezuka's motive was to keep _him_ safe.)

(His natural reaction was to bristle, but there was no time right now to indulge in emotions like indignation.)

"A distraction," Niou said, and Keigo saw Marui Bunta's gaze flicker over to them, then back, so momentarily that Keigo would have missed it if he hadn't been watching.

_Is the only way?_ Yukimura Seiichi's telepathic voice. Fey and unusual. But it was calm, steady and implacable. Soothing in its strength. They were suddenly in a ten-way telepathic conference, mediated by Yukimura's psionic gifts, Keigo and Tezuka and the eight Rikkai runners.

_It is what will happen,_ answered Niou.

There was a flicker of telepathic thought, and Keigo felt the movements of minds communicating with each other in conversations he was not privy to: Niou to Yukimura, Niou to Yagyuu, Niou to Marui, Yanagi to Yukimura to Sanada.

Then Yukimura: _Jackal, Kirihara, increase your range of defense to cover the doorway so that the others can come in._

Tezuka said: _Neither Atobe nor I plan to take arms against the throne._

_Nor did I expect that of either of you_, returned Yukimura. _But Atobe nevertheless owes me one last favour, and the task I would have him does not involve either harming anyone or being harmed himself. 'Remember me when you come into your kingdom.' I think you haven't forgotten those words of mine, Atobe_

It was true. He did owe Yukimura at least that much - more, probably, considering the events of eight years ago. Being stabbed in a single lung didn't even begin to cover it.

That being said he wasn't prepared to die for Yukimura's sake, or anything nonsenical like that.

He felt Niou's derision across the telepathic link. _Nobody's asking you to sacrifice your life or anything like that, Your Most Charming Imperial Highness. Just step through the doorway and let those InSec agents see their beloved missing prince. We're going to need it for the first part of our distraction._

_They may still fire, even if it's me_, warned Keigo.

_Hence the protections from Kirihara and Jackal,_ said Yanagi.

_Okay then_, said Keigo. _If your plan is complete, then let's begin._ The Rikkai runners still had not disclosed to them the nature of what the intended diversion was - Yukimura did appear to subscribe to the practice of letting as few people know his schemes as was possible - but that was fine. Keigo could accept that.

The four of them stepped through the doorway.

They were greeted by a storm of artillery flying straight at them. Bullets rained across the room, only to be stopped by Jackal's telekinesis, halting and clattering down to the ground. Plasma arcs flared bright, sweeping dangerously close before dissipating in midair. Even knowing that they were safe, the experience was disconcerting.

Keigo looked straight ahead through the chaos, at the throne - and looked the emperor in the eyes.

The Silver Emperor raised his left hand. Snapped his fingers.

For a precious twenty seconds or so all attacks from the imperial defenders ceased. Guards, psionics, InSec agents - they all stared at him. Recognising him, the runaway prince presumed dead. A hush descended upon the throne room. There was no one Keigo recognised among the group - save for Meino Nanako, the Level 9 Immune, who stood by the emperor's side, a wide-eyed girl with distress in her face - but there was no doubt that they recognised him.

At first it seemed as if time would stand still indefinitely, the two groups gazing at each other across the throne room.

Then Niou moved.

Niou's sudden sprint forward was accompanied by the flick of Marui's fingers plunging the room into an dazzling inferno. Suddenly Keigo's entire field of vision was clogged up by thick smoke and brilliant blue flame filling the entire hallway.

He barely managed to visualise Niou as the silver-haired precognitive darted forward, disappearing into this sudden firestorm apparently unharmed (whether because Kirihara was still protecting him with his Immune gift, or Marui was taking care to leave Niou unscorched, Keigo wasn't sure).

Niou's movements initially made no sense to him. The old man had his own telekinetics with their shields, and Meino Nanako's Immunity, and there was surely nothing a single runner could do against those defenses when Sanada and Yanagi and Marui's attacks had availed nothing.

Fire, blue and white and furious, and then finally it cleared, the smoke rising to reveal Niou standing right before the dais, his pistol held out before him.

Aiming straight at Meino Nanako, the muzzle of his weapon barely three feet from her face.

Every single combatant in the emperor's entourage reacted simultaneously.

Bullets riddled Niou's body with holes, as plasma shots came snaking through the air and severed his right arm off at the shoulder. Fire and lightning came flaring down, as the combined attacks of three imperial groups suddenly found their focus in a single treasonous runner.

Half of Niou's body was unrecognisable by the time he hit the floor.

Keigo had seen his share of violent, bloody combat in the last eight years - but his immediate reaction was nevertheless to freeze, completely stunned.

Not so Yukimura. There was a sudden surge of Empathic power in the room, a broadcasting of the Rikkai president's emotions - exhaustion, triumph, release, sorrow. Then there was a feeling of utter panic, amplified, surging through the place - with a start Keigo realised that it was the thoughts of Meino Nanako herself - _her_ distress, _her_ horror, the shell shock of a girl too young and too privileged to have seen the destruction of the streets, a girl who had never seen anyone die in front of her, let alone a boy her own age.

It was the smallest of openings, but it was enough for Yukimura.

Meino Nanako fainted.

And just like that, the balance was broken.

The realisation was visible on the faces of the imperial defenders, even as one by one, they began passing out under the force of Yukimura's Empathic gift. Eyes rolling back in their heads, weapons falling from their loosening grasps, knees sinking to the floor.

In under a minute the only conscious member of the opponents's party was the Silver Emperor himself, seated on the throne, surrounded by the sleeping bodies of his men and women. His gaze remained curiously dispassionate as he stared from Yukimura to Keigo, and then Yukimura again.

_Hello, grandfather_, said Yukimura. _I've been waiting for a very long time._

"And so have I," said the voice of a newcomer. They all turned to the doorway to see who had just arrived.

It was Tezuka Kuniharu, dressed in InSec uniform and wearing his usual spectacles and gentle smile, and as the Rikkai runners spun, preparing to attack, he lifted his cocked pistol and shot the Silver Emperor with one perfectly aimed bullet, right between the eyes.

"I think," said Tezuka Kuniharu, "that you children will have a better time of running the country if you do not begin your tenure with regicide."


	16. Epilogue

_Shin Tokyo April 2471 CE_

By springtime the mausoleum of the Silver Emperor had become a favourite haunt of the city's religious population.

Despite the scarcity of real estate in Shin Tokyo the imperial tomb complex sat on extensive hectares of land. It had been built by the emperor decades ago, an early concession to the inevitability of death. Designed in the style of an ancient Old Earth mausoleum, it bore the architectural features of faiths and tradition the old man certainly had not held true when he was alive.

To Keigo it seemed strange that even now there remained citizens of Shinnihon who believed in apotheosis, who believed that the Silver Emperor had ascended to become a god, but each passing day brought fresh proof that religion was alive and well in Shin Tokyo. Each morning saw the burial mound of the emperor covered with new offerings of apples, tangerines, asters and white chrysanthemums, scented candles, and joss sticks fragrant with sandalwood. Incense burned unceasingly in the censers that lined the entryway to the tomb complex.

"The irony of it all," said Sakaki, "is that the Silver Emperor would never have cared about being venerated after death. To him admiration or flattery was only a means to an end, never an end in itself."

Keigo didn't particularly care about what the old man's motivations had been, but he nodded and agreed. The last six months had seen Sakaki reveal far more about his former lover than Sakaki had ever disclosed. Keigo listened, more because Sakaki needed to talk than because Keigo held any curiosity about Silver Emperor.

Truth was Keigo would probably never comprehend Sakaki's grief and guilt about the Silver Emperor. But he owed to Sakaki to at least try and understand.

But it was not to visit his deceased father that Keigo, Sakaki, Oshitari and Yagyuu had come here today.

On the outskirts of the emperor's tomb proper lay a wide and elegant field dotted with dozens of tombstones. It was in this graveyard that the ashes of the late Princess Minako lay, marked by a sumptuous headstone; it was also here that the empty coffin thought to house Yukimura Seiichi's body had been buried until it was dug up a few months ago.

The last half-year had seen a multitude of additions to the graves here. Kotoha had been buried here, as had Mizuki. At Keigo's orders all the casualties - InSec, civilian, runner - in the events leading to the restructuring of Shinnihon had been honored with funeral rites funded by the imperial treasury.

Yamato's ashes lay here too, of course, as did Niou's.

Keigo looked across the rows of tomb markers to where Oshitari and Yagyuu stood in front of Niou's grave. Neither of the two had brought offerings or flowers; they never did.

Since the Runner's Compliance Strategy had come into effect Yagyuu Hiroshi had made the decision to attend medical school. Oshitari had elected not to join him, choosing rather to study biochemistry at university together with Gakuto. Still though, the two medics and former classmates had cautiously rekindled their friendship over the past winter and spring.

In the end all of Hyoutei had chosen to remain in Shin Tokyo, even Keigo and Sakaki. It was a decision none of them had taken lightly.

Keigo knelt in order to place a bouquet of lilies in front of Kitazono Kotoha's headstone. The girl's family lived far away, in Nuevo Hokkaido, but Akazawa Yoshirou visited her grave on a weekly basis. Fuji Yuuta left flowers sometimes as well.

Niou's grave itself had turned into a minor tourist attraction. Ever since the establishment of Shinnihon as a constitutional monarchy rumours had trickled throughout the country - via Chinese whispers, via VR hubs, via blogospheres and newsfeeds and old-fashioned face-to-face gossip. The story of Rikkai, the story of Shinnihon's missing princes, the story of the Tezuka family, and the role the country's most powerful precognitive had played in bringing all those stories together, was now common knowledge in every household.

Yukimura Seiichi had of course played an active and vital role in managing this dissemination of urban legend. While he no longer spent his days exclusively in VR, and had accepted the legal sanctions that the newly formed Parliament had placed on his use of Shinnihon's public neural networks, his ability to control online information remained peerless even within those limits.

Yukimura was currently on Old Earth, undergoing restorative surgeries too complex and specialised to be performed on this planet. He would return in the summertime; at that point, he and Keigo would have to figure out a way to live with each other. Tezuka Kunimitsu and Sanada Genichirou had made it clear to both of them that a duel to the death was not an acceptable method of reconciliation.

Tezuka and Sanada were particularly annoying when they happened to agree with each other.

Though they were right of course. Given that Keigo, together with Yukimura, represented the new public face of Shinnihon's constitutional monarchy, murdering Yukimura probably wasn't a viable option.

The temptation remained, though. Yukimura's personality didn't really improve on further acquaintance.

But it was a time of compromises and they had all found it necessary to make some concessions: Rikkai, InSec, the Tezukas. All of them were aware that the political stability of Shinnihon remained balanced on a knife edge. Any victories that had been won would be entirely Pyrrhic if the nation plunged into civil unrest.

He stood up again, having left the flowers resting on Kotoha's grave. Yagyuu and Oshitari were already waiting by the flyers.

"Do you want to visit the old man's grave?" he asked Sakaki.

Sakaki across the graveyard to the east up at the stone archway that marked the entrance to the Silver Emperor's tomb proper. There was a distant expression in his eyes.

"Not today," said Sakaki. "Perhaps I'll come on my own this weekend."

_Perhaps? As if you don't visit every single weekend_, Keigo thought. But it was better than visiting every evening, which was what Sakaki had been doing last November.

They joined Yagyuu and Oshitari and mounted their fliers. As they rose into the air, higher and higher, the landscape of Shin Tokyo revealed itself before them. Long tangled highways and overpasses, the color and movement of a hundred thousand cars, the air dotted with half a million flyers.

It was this city that Keigo belonged to, and it belonged to him now - not as an object to possess, but as a duty to carry.

A challenge, a burden, a role he'd rejected years ago but that he took on willingly now. And it was not Keigo's way to hesitate once a decision was reached.

#

"Your parents have emigrated to the Bundesrepublik, have they not?"

He met with Tezuka Kunimitsu every Thursday for dinner. It was one of the things he treasured most about the new Shinnihon, about the process of decriminalisation - the opportunity to finally meet and exchange ideas with the runners he'd negotiated with, fought against and admired.

Or even the ones he'd wounded.

Keigo had never spoken to Tezuka about the neurological damage he'd inflicted on the former Seigaku president, in that VR battle that seemed so long ago now. Every time Keigo thought to bring it up he was stopped by an odd sense that the subject was irrelevant. It felt as if that fight had been fought by two different boys, younger and unknowing.

Tezuka touched the keypad at the edge of their dining table, and the holographic menu he had been perusing dissipated away. "They went last week. Together with the Princess Aya." He filled his own water glass and Keigo's.

Voluntary exile had been chosen by numerous members of the old order, including most of the extended imperial family. "Do you wish you'd gone with them?" asked Keigo.

"I don't have any regrets," said Tezuka. "There is much work to be done."

"How is InSec going?" Keigo himself had been busy with his new duties, to the point where the implementation of the Runner's Compliance Strategy with regards to Hyoutei had largely been left to Sakaki and to Hiyoshi Wakashi.

Tezuka gave a wry smile. "It goes as well as can be expected. Inui and Yanagi will eventually take the role over. It was never my plan to build a career with InSec." His gaze went distant, and they fell into silence.

Some weeks ago Keigo had asked Tezuka whether he knew that his father was planning to move against the Silver Emperor. Tezuka had replied, voice neutral, that it was his father's policy to make sure that InSec operatives knew "precisely what they need to know and neither more nor less."

Secrets within secrets within secrets, all unearthed now and vulnerable to scrutiny. Keigo wondered if they had the ability to create a Shinnihon with more justice and transparency. He did not doubt that he had chosen the right thing, in agreeing to take on the role of a figurehead, a constitutional monarch, no matter how little he had wanted to return to the home he escaped from as a child. Everyone taking part in in this tale had been forced to make choices they had not wished to make, and Keigo's duties were less onerous than most. But nevertheless the enormity of the reforms they were trying to effect struck him at times.

"The work may never be finished."

"No," Tezuka agreed. "It may not."

A throne, a country, a lifetime of deeds to perform. And friends to see through the journey with.

"I'm looking forward to it," Keigo said.

**END STREETS OF NIPPON.**


End file.
